IEADINGS-FROM 

^AMERICAN 



fALTER TAYLOR FIELD 



. ■■■■■' ...... 





'r 




Class 
Book 



Copyright W.. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



V 



READINGS FROM 

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 

LITERATURE 



A TEXTBOOK FOR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS 
AND UPPER GRAMMAR GRADES 



BY 

WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






GINN AND COMPANY • l'RO- 
PR1ETORS • BOSTON • L.S.A. 



APK I0ISI9 
©ClAr>^5(Ul ^ 



PREFACE 

To read a good book is like listening to a good friend. 
Ruskin has said that these book friends of ours — the wisest 
and wittiest people of all time — are always waiting on our 
bookcase shelves to talk to us, to speak in their best words 
and of the things nearest their hearts, and that we can have 
a visit from them when we will by simply opening the pages 
and letting them talk. To make these famous men and women 
who are talking to us through their books, our friends in fact 
as well as in name, to feel their presence and their influence 
as living persons, is the object of this book. Great litera- 
ture is not a dead thing. It is eternally alive, and we should 
take up the reading of it not as a task to be accomplished 
but as a pleasure to be enjoyed. 

The selections in this book are arranged in the order in 
which they were written. As we read them, we see unfolding 
before us the history of England and America. First, with 
the beginnings of English books and learning is Chaucer, and 
a little later Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. After them 
come the writers of the Eighteenth Century, Addison, Gold- 
smith, and Burns ; then the great Romantic writers and poets, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott and others of their day ; then 
the Victorians, — Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Thackeray 
and their contemporaries. 

We find American literature growing out of the English 
and flowering in the last century in that group of poets and 
writers which included Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
Emerson, Whittier, Lowell and their followers. We find 
the literature of our own times growing out of that which 



iv PREFACE 

went before, as the branch grows out of the parent tree. 
We do not ask you now to study a formal history of these 
things, but only to note them while you are following this 
course of reading from the best writers that the world has 
ever known. These readings will not only interest you, — ■ 
they will make you think, and the more you think, the more 
you will rind in them to think about. Do not be satisfied 
to leave a selection until you understand it. Read it first to 
get a general impression of it. Then read it with the notes 
and questions before you, and see how much you can find 
in it that you missed the first time. You are like a miner 
digging for gold. When you find a nugget hold it up to the 
light. 

Acknowledgments. The selections from Hawthorne, Emer- 
son, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Thoreau, Aldrich, 
Warner, Harte, and Burroughs are reprinted by permission of 
and arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized 
publishers. 

Acknowledgments are also due to the following publishers 
for permission to reprint, under special arrangement, copy- 
righted selections from their publications : to Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons for the selections from Lanier, Dr. Henry van Dyke, 
and Alan Seeger; to the J. B. Lippincott Company for the 
selection from Lanier's " Florida"; to The Macmillan Com- 
pany for the five poems from Tennyson; to D. Apple ton 
and Company for the selections from Bryant ; to Little, 
Brown, and Company for the selections from Parkman, 
Hale, and Emily Dickinson; to the B. F. Johnson Publish- 
ing Company for Timrod's " Spring"; to the Harr Wagner 
Publishing Company for Miller's " Columbus"; to Mr. 
Horace Traubel for the Whitman selections ; and to the 
Atlanta Constitution for the extract from Henry W. Grady's 
speech "The New South." 



CONTENTS 

I. READINGS FROM EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

PAGE 

Geoffrey Chaucer (a.d. 1340-1400) 1 

Faithful Constance Canterbury Tales 6 

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) 11 

The Red Cross Knight's First Battle . . . The Fairy Queen 14 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 22 

A Mysterious Island The Tempest 26 

John Milton (1608-1674) 42 

The Enchanted Forest Comus 47 

II. READINGS FROM EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 

Joseph Addison (167 2-1 7 19) 53 

Frozen Words The Tatler 58 

Samuel Johnson (1 709-1 784) 62 

Captured by Arabs .... Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia 67 

Oliver Goldsmith (17 28-1 774) 73 

Moses at the Fair The Vicar of Wakefield 77 

Scenes from " The Deserted Village" 80 

Robert Burns (1759-1796) 84 

My Heart's in the Highlands 87 

John Anderson, My Jo 88 

A Man's a Man for A' That 89 

III. READINGS FROM THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE OF 
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 

William Wordsworth (1 770-1850) 91 

The Daffodils 95 

The Solitary Reaper 97 

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold 98 



vi CONTEXTS 

PAGE 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (177 2-1834) 99 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 103 

Sir Walter Scott (1 771-183 2) 117 

The Archery Match at Ashby I van hoe 1 20 

Marmion and Douglas Marmion 127 

Breathes There the Man with Soul So Dead 

The Lay of the Last Minstrel 130 

Charles Lamb (1 775-1834) 131 

The Discovery of Roast Pig Essays of Ella 135 

Thomas de Quincey (1 785-1859) 140 

A Night on the Mail Coach . . . The English Mail Coach 142 

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1 788-1824) 149 

The Night before Waterloo . . Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 152 

The Destruction of Sennacherib 156 

Solitude Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 158 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1 792-1822) 159 

The Cloud 162 

To a Skylark 166 

John Keats (1795-1821) 170 

Robin Hood 173 

To Autumn 176 



IV. READINGS FROM EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Benjamin Franklin ( 1 706-1 790) 170 

Franklin's Boyhood lutobiograpky 1S0 

The Journey to Philadelphia lulobiography 182 



CONTENTS vii 

V. READINGS FROM NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 

PAGE 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 189 

The Flight of Louis XVI The French Revolution 193 

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800- 18 59) 198 

Horatius 201 

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) 213 

A Gentleman The Idea of a University 214 

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) 218 

The Bugle Song 222 

Sir Galahad . 223 

Ring Out, Wild Bells In Memoriam 228 

Flower in the Crannied Wall 230 

Crossing the Bar 231 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) 233 

A Virginian with Braddock's Expedition . . The Virginians 237 

Charles Dickens (181 2-1870) 251 

The Storming of the Bastille . . . . A Tale of Two Cities 256 

Mr. Pickwick and his Friends on the Ice . . Pickwick Papers 259 

Robert Browning (181 2-1889) 268 

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix . . . 272 

Herve Riel 275 

My Star 282 

John Ruskin (1819-1900) 283 

Books .' . • Sesame and Lilies 287 

Marian Evans (George Eliot) (1819-1880) 290 

The Flood The Mill on the Floss 294 

Rudyard Kipling (1865- ) 304 

Recessional 307 



VI. READINGS FROM NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) 310 

Bunker Hill First Bunker Hill Address 313 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850) 317 

Peace Speech in the Oregon Debate 320 

Washington Irving (1 783-1859) 322 

Rip Van Winkle 326 

James Fenimore Cooper (1 789-1851) 339 

The Escape of the Spy The Spy 343 

William Cullen Bryant (1 794-1878) 347 

To the Fringed Gentian 351 

To a Waterfowl 352 

Edward Everett (1794-1865) 355 

Dawn Address at Dudley Observatory 356 

William Hickling Prescott (1 796-1859) 359 

The Discovery of Peru Conquest of Peru 362 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (i 804-1 864) 368 

The Great Stone Face 373 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 386 

The Bells 388 

A Descent into the Maelstrom 394 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-188 2) 402 

Concord Hymn 405 

The Humblebee 407 

The Rhodora 410 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-188 2) 411 

Evangeline 415 

The Ship of State The Building of the Ship 430 

John Greenleaf Whittier (1 807-1 892) 431 

Snow-Bound 435 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809- 1894) 443 

Old Ironsides 447 

The Last Leaf . 449 

The Chambered Nautilus 451 

John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) 454 

The Relief of Leyden . . . The Rise of the Dutch Republic 456 



CONTENTS ix 



PAGE 



Henry David Thoreau (181 7-1862) 463 

The Maine Woods and Katahdin . . . The Maine Woods 466 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) 472 

A Day in June The Vision of Sir Launfal 477 

Winter The Vision of Sir Launfal 479 

Beautiful My Country . . . . . Commemoration Ode 482 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 483 

O Captain, My Captain 487 

Bird Song Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 488 

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) 491 

Philip Nolan Acts as Interpreter The Man without a Country 492 

Francis Parkman (1823-1893) 496 

The Buffalo Oregon Trail 498 

Charles Dudley Warner (1827-1900) 504 

Lost in the Woods In the Wilderness 507 

Henry Timrod (1829-1867) 511 

Spring 512 

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1 830-1 886) .516 

A Storm in the Distance 518 

Flying Furze 519 

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 520 

The Bluebird 521 

Autumn 521 

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking 522 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) (183 5-1 9 10) . . 523 

The New England Weather 526 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) 529 

On a Balcony From Ponkapog to Pesth 533 

William Dean Howells (1837- ) 539 

An Indian Battle in Ohio Stories of Ohio 542 

John Burroughs (1837- ) 546 

Following the Bees Pepacton 548 

Bret Harte (1839-1902) 554 

Baby Sylvester 557 



x CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Joaquin Miller (1841-1913) 560 

Columbus 561 

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) 564 

The Song of the Chattahoochee 568 

Tampa Robins 571 

A Voyage on a Florida River 572 

Henry Woodfin Grady (1851-1889) 576 

The New South 576 

Henry van Dyke (1852- ) 579 

Indian Summer 580 

Work 581 

VII. READINGS FROM THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

Woodrow Wilson (1856- ) 582 

A War for Democracy $83 

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) 587 

The Soldier 587 

Alan Seeger (1888-1916) 589 

I Have a Rendezvous with Death 589 

John McCrae 591 

In Flanders Fields 591 

R. W. Lillard 592 

America's Answer 592 

Vocabulary 593 



READINGS FROM ENGLISH AND 
AMERICAN LITERATURE 

I. EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 
GEOFFREY CHAUCER 

A.D. i34o(?)-i40o 

The first great story-teller who wrote in English was 
Geoffrey Chaucer. He was born about 1340, when Edward 
III was king of England, and when the English language was 
just beginning to be used for books. 

Before his time books were written generally in Latin 
or in French, though there were several fine old poems in 
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, telling of the deeds of heroes, 
and of fabulous monsters, and of the lives of wandering 
minstrels. The greatest of these poems was " Beowulf." 

But Chaucer wrote of the life of his own times, and told 
old stories and fables in everyday language. The English 
which he used was not such English as we speak to-day, 
but perhaps if you heard it, you could catch enough words 
to understand. 

For instance, Chaucer wishes to tell us that it happened 
one day in the spring season that he was at the Tabard Inn 
at Southwark, ready to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury with 
a devout or prayerful heart, and that at night there came to 
that hotel a company of twenty -nine people of various sorts, 
all pilgrims, who had fallen by chance into comradeship. 
This is the way he tells it : 



2 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Bifel that, in that seson on a day, 

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay 

Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage 

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, 

At night was come in-to that hostelrye 

Wei nyne and twenty in a companye, 

Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle 

In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle. 

Those were rude old days. People traveled on horse- 
back, for the roads were too narrow and too muddy for 
carriages ; and they seldom traveled alone, but in com- 
panies, for fear of thieves. Houses were cold and walls 
were bare, except that on some of those belonging to the 
rich was hung, here and there, a piece of tapestry or curtain 
with figures worked upon it. Floors were covered in winter 
with rushes or straw to keep the feet warm. Chairs were 
wooden benches. Tables were boards laid upon racks or 
horses, and were taken down when not in use. There were no 
knives or forks ; people ate with their fingers and were none 
too nice about it. Chaucer tells us, as if it were quite remark- 
able, that a certain lady let no morsel fall from her lips in 
eating, nor dipped her fingers too deeply into the sauce, and 
that she could so carry her food that no drop of it fell upon 
her breast. 

Clothes, in those days, were of gay colors, and the clothes 
of the rich were often elegantly embroidered and covered 
with jewels. Every trade had its own special dress, and you 
could tell at a glance whether a man was a merchant, a farmer, 
a miller, or a carpenter. But you will be most interested to 
hear something about Chaucer himself. 

Chaucer's father was a London merchant who used to 
supply the king's table with wine. In those days nearly 
every one drank wine and ale, and there was much drunk- 
enness. The boy Chaucer was probably sent to school and 
was certainly bright and a good scholar, for he always loved 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 3 

books. We know little about his boyhood until we hear of 
him at seventeen as a page in the house of the Princess 
Elizabeth. Here he probably waited upon the ladies, learned 
to be polite — or as polite as any one was in those days — and 
acquired all the manners of the court. Two years later he 
followed his master Prince Lionel into France, fought in the 
wars, and was taken prisoner. We know that King Edward 
paid something toward his ransom. 

Some eight years or so after Chaucer had returned to 
England he married a lady of noble birth, who was one of 
the maids of honor to the queen, and about the same time 
he won the friendship of John of Gaunt, the powerful Duke of 
Lancaster, who was one of King Edward's sons. This friendship 
lasted throughout the lives of the two men and was made firmer 
by the marriage of John of Gaunt to the sister of Chaucer's wife. 

Chaucer now began to be an important figure at court. 
He was sent by the king several times to France and to Italy 
on business of state and was made a public officer, having 
charge of all the duties, or taxes, on imported goods. He 
was also a knight of the shire, or as we should say now, a 
member of Parliament. And during all these years of public 
business he studied and wrote poetry. He tells us that when 
his work at the office was done he would go home and read 
and write far into the night. 

After a time John of Gaunt lost his power at court, and 
with that, Chaucer lost his office and was for some years 
poor and in debt. But at last John became powerful again 
and gave Chaucer another office. 

Uuder King Richard II Chaucer was given charge of the 
public works. It was his business to see that the palace, 
the Tower of London, and other public buildings, as well as 
the city walls, were kept in repair. 

When Henry IV, who was the son of John of Gaunt, be- 
came king, one of his first acts was to increase the pension 
allowed by the government to his father's old friend. But 



4 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Chaucer did not need the pension long, for he died about a 
year later, in 1400, at the age of sixty years. 

Chaucer's greatest poem is the " Canterbury Tales," which 
was begun when he was about forty-five years old. He tells 
us that one day in the early spring he set out to make a pil- 
grimage to Canterbury. A pilgrimage was a journey to some 
church or tomb or holy place, and the journey was made to 
show the pilgrim's love toward God and to gain some special 
blessing. In former times a pilgrim took long journeys on 
foot, dressed in coarse garments and with only a staff in his 
hand to help him in walking. But in Chaucer's day pil- 
grims went on horseback, gayly clothed, and the pilgrimage 
was more a holiday excursion than a religious act. So Chaucer 
went over London Bridge and put up at the Tabard Inn in 
Southwark, as you have read in the few lines already quoted. 
Here he knew he should find others who were making the same 
journey, and he would thus have company and protection 
against the thieves who were then swarming along all the 
English roads. 

The travelers whom he met were of all kinds and classes. 
There was a knight, who had just come back from the wars ; 
and his son, who was a young squire; and their servant, 
with a coat and hood of green and a mighty bow. And there 
were two nuns, and several priests, and a monk, and a mer- 
chant with a forked beard, and a lawyer full of business — 
and yet Chaucer says that he " seemed busier than he was." 
And there was a miller, with a wart on his nose and a mouth 
as big as a furnace ; and there was a long-legged reeve, or 
steward, with a shaven head ; and there was a poor scholar 
from Oxford, and a good-natured plowman, and a carpenter, 
and a sailor, and many another. 

After they had all eaten a good supper, the innkeeper, Harry 
Bailey, a big man with a bright eye and a merry laugh, sug- 
gested that they should make the way seem shorter by telling 
stories. 



6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"Let each one," he said, "tell two stories on the way to 
Canterbury, and two more on the way home, and the one 
who tells the best story shall have a good supper here in thi , 
place, when we come back, and the others shall pay for the 
supper. I will go with you and be your guide." All the 
party agreed ; and the next morning they set out upon their 
journey. 

The stories that were told were of all kinds, some serious 
and some amusing. The one given here is an old tale that 
was told by the Man of Law. It is put into modern prose, 
with a few quotations from Chaucer's verse, modernized just 
enough to make them readable. 

FAITHFUL CONSTANCE 

In Syria there once lived a company of rich merchants, 
who traveled with their wares far and wide over the world. 
On one of their voyages they visited Rome, and while there 
they heard much talk about the emperor's daughter, the 
5 Lady Constance. Every day new tales of her beauty, her 
goodness, and her wisdom were told to them. 

When the merchants returned to Syria, the sultan sent for 
them and asked them what they had seen and heard upon 
their travels. They told him, and among other things men- 

iotioned what they had heard concerning the Lady Constance. 
In fact, they spoke in so high praise of her that the sultan kept 
thinking of her day and night and finally decided that he must 
have her for his wife. 

So he sent ambassadors to Rome, bearing rich gifts and 

masking for the hand of the Lady Constance in marriage. He 
said that if she would come to him he would give up the 
Moslem religion and become a Christian. The emperor 
agreed, apparently without consulting Constance, and she, 
sad and oppressed, but yielding to her father's will, made 

20 herself ready. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 7 

The day is comen 1 for departing now, 

I say the woful, fatal day is come ; 

No longer tarrying may there be, I trowe 2 

But forthward they make ready, all and some. 

Constance, who was with sorrow overcome, 5 

Full pale arose and dressed her for to wend 3 

For well she sees there is no other end. 

She sailed away with a splendid retinue and after many 
days arrived in Syria. Now the old sultana, mother of the 
sultan, when she heard of her son's plan, was violently angry. 10 
She did not wish to give up the Mohammedan faith, so she 
determined to get rid of Constance and all her Christian 
attendants. She called together a council of her friends and 
told them her plot, — which was to invite all the Christians 
to a feast, and when they had come together, to put them 15 
to death. The sultan, hearing that the old sultana wished to 
honor the Christians, was pleased and gladly gave his consent. 

Great was the press and rich was the array 

Of Syrians and Romans met in fere 4 

The mother of the Sultan, rich and gay 20 

Receiveth her with marvelous good cheer, 

As any mother might her daughter dear ; 

And to the neighboring city, side by side, 

An easy journey festively they ride. 

But shortly for to tell you, in a word, 2 5 

The sultan and the Christians every one 

Were stabbed and hewn to pieces at the board, 

But Lady Constance was preserved alone, — 

The ancient sultaness, — accursed crone ! 

Hath with her comrades done this woful deed, 30 

For she herself would all the country lead. 

1 come 2 believe 3 go 4 company 



8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

As for Constance, they saved her for what they considered 
a worse fate. They set her in a boat without a rudder and 
told her to find her way back to Rome. 

The boat was driven far through the Greek Sea and the 

5 Straits of Gibraltar, till at last it was cast ashore on the coast 
of Northumberland, which was a part of England. The 
constable of a castle that was near by found Constance, 
half-dead, and took her to his home, where his wife Dame 
Hermengild cared for her until she was strong again. She 

10 lived with them a long time and had many adventures in 
that pagan land. At last King /Ella was told of her goodness 
and beauty, and of the misfortunes which she had suffered, and 
to make a long story short, he married her, and there was joy 
and feasting. King /Ella and all his court became Christians. 

15 But King /Ella, too, had a queen mother who wished to 
have her way, and this queen mother, Donegild, was deter- 
mined to be rid of the young queen Constance. It happened 
some time after, that King /Ella was called to Scotland to 
fight his enemies, and while he was gone a little prince was 

20 born, to whom Constance gave the name of Maurice. The 
constable at once sent a messenger to King ^lla telling him 
the joyful news. On the way, the messenger stopped at the 
old queen mother Donegild's castle and told her of the great 
event that had occurred in the king's house. 

25 She asked him to stay for a night and rest himself, and gave 
him ale and strong drink, so that he was soon sunk in a drunken 
sleep. Then she stole the letters which he was carrying to 
the king, and put other letters in their place, in which she 
wrote that the young prince was a horrible-looking, fiend-like 

30 creature, so frightful that no one dared stay in the castle with 
him, — and that his mother was undoubtedly a witch. 

The king received the letters and was greatly cast down, 
but he wrote to the constable asking him to take good care of 
the child and of his wife till his return. This letter he gave 

35 to the same messenger and sent him back. 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 9 

On the way the messenger stopped again at Donegild's 
castle, and again Donegild kept him and gave him strong 
drink and while he was asleep stole the king's letter, writing 
in place of it another, in which the constable was commanded, 
on pain of hanging, not to allow Constance to remain in his 5 
realm " three days and the quarter of a tide," but to put her 
and the child into the same boat that brought her to the king- 
dom, push her out into the sea, and tell her never toreturr. 

The constable and all the court were rilled with grief and 
pity, but there was no questioning the command of the king. 10 
So Constance, pale and sad, with her little one in her arms, 
went down to the seashore. She prayed and said : 

He that hath kept me from the false blame 

While I was in the land amongst you all 
He can me keep from harm and eke from shame 15 

In the salt sea. .... 

Her little child lay weeping in her arm, 

And kneeling, piteously to him she said, 
"Peace, little one, I will do thee no harm." 

With that she took her kerchief from her head 20 

And over his own little eyes she laid ; 
Then in her arms she lulled him close and fast 
While up to heaven her meek eyes she cast. 

Soon afterwards King /Ella came home and asked for his 
wife and child. The constable's heart grew cold at the ques- 25 
tion, as he told the king what he had done and what letters 
he had received. /Ella did not blame the constable, for the 
orders were explicit and could not be passed over, but he dis- 
covered the trick of Donegild and had her put to death. 

Meanwhile the emperor of Rome received letters from 30 
Syria, telling him how all the Christian folk had been de- 
stroyed, and straightway he sent a certain mighty senator 
with a large expedition to punish the Syrians. The senator 



to EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

burned and slew and harried all Syria for many a day. Then 
he turned homeward, and on the way fell in with the boat 
in which Constance and her little son were drifting. The 
senator did not know who she was, and she did not tell him, 

5 but he brought her back to Rome and took care of her. 

Some years after this, King /Ella went on a pilgrimage to 

v Rome and was there honorably entertained. At a feast that 

was given for him, the senator came, bringing with him 

Maurice, then a half-grown boy. King .Ella was attracted 

ioby the boy and asked, "Whose is that fair child that standeth 
yonder!" ''I know not, 1 ' said the senator. "A mother he 
hath but father hath he none that I know of." Then he told 
King /Ella how the boy and his mother had been found. 
/Ella went to the senator's house, found Constance, and ex- 

15 plained the cruel mistake. He took her with him to her father, 
the emperor, who was as surprised and joyful as himself. 
JEWs. and Constance went back to England together and 
reigned happily until the death of /Ella; when Constance re- 
turned with Maurice to Rome and there, after some years, 

20 Maurice succeeded his grandfather as emperor. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Write or tell what you can of life in England at the time of Chaucer. 
2. Write or tell what you can about Chaucer. 3. Give the general plan 
of the " Canterbury Tales, " and describe some of the pilgrims. 4. Tell in 
your own words, and briefly, this story of Faithful Constance. 5. What is 
the constable of a castle? 6. What improbable things do you find in the 
story? 7. What does this show you in regard to the story? (This is a 
very old story, — older than Chaucer. He found it, in prose, in a book 
of stories written during the Middle Ages, and called Gesta Romanorum 
— which means Deeds of the Romans. It is entirely legendary.) 8. What 
is a legend? 

Other good stories from Chaucer are found in Darton's "Tales of the 
Canterbury Pilgrims," McSpadden's " Stones from Chaucer," and Eva 
March Tappan's "The Chaucer Story Book." Katharine Lee Bates has 
also modernized some of them, in verse, — in the same meter as Chaucer's 
original tales — with the title "Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims." 



EDMUND SPENSER 

1552-1599 

About a hundred and fifty years had passed since the 
death of Chaucer, the great story-teller of the " Canterbury 
Tales." During that time few great books had been written. 
Sir Thomas Malory had translated from the French the stories 
of King Arthur — some of which you have doubtless read, 
the Bible had also been translated, and about the same time 
a man named Caxton had printed the first book in English. 
Before then books had been written by hand. Columbus, 
too, had sailed from Spain and had discovered the new 
continent of America. During all these years men were 
beginning to think less about their meat pies and strong drink 
and were growing anxious to learn. The world was waking 
up. The old Greek learning which had been so long forgotten 
was revived, and because it was new to the people of that age 
they called it the "new learning." So the years had passed 
since Chaucer died. • 

In 1552 another great poet and story-teller was born 
in England. His name was Edmund Spenser, and like 
Chaucer he was born in London. It is supposed that his 
father was a tailor and that he was poor. If young Spenser 
had been like most boys in his position, he would have been 
content to be a tailor like his father, but the lad had heard of 
the "new learning" and wanted some of it. He wanted to go 
to college. As his father could not afford to send him, he 
went as a sizar ; that is, he earned his board and lodging by 
waiting on the tables and doing other work. He also acted 
as a servant to wealthy students. He worked hard and was 



12 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

often ill as a result of it, but he loved his college and speaks of 
it in his poems with great tenderness. 

At twenty-four he had finished his course, and still being 
in ill health, he went to live for a time with relatives in the 
north of England. There he began to write a poem called 
"The Shepherd's Calendar/ 1 telling of country life through all 
the months of the year. 

Then one of his college friends wrote asking him to come 
to London. He went, and there he met several famous 
courtiers and scholars. The great Sir Philip Sidney became 
his friend, and the Earl of Leicester took him into his house 
as secretary. He traveled to France and to Ireland in the 
service of the earl and published "The Shepherd's Calendar," 
which made him known. 

Queen Elizabeth was then upon the throne of England 
and was beginning to gather about her that famous group of 
poets and scholars who have made the England of her time 
so celebrated — Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser 
and Lord Bacon and, greatest of all, Shakespeare. 

Spenser soon received a position as secretary to the governor 
of Ireland. In Ireland he saw war and bloodshed. The 
Irish were in rebellion against the English rule and were fight- 
ing savagely. But at last the rebellion was put down, and 
Spenser was. given for a home a fair old ivy-covered castle 
near the city of Cork. There he lived for many years and 
there he wrote most of his great poem, "The Fairy Queen." 
Sir Walter Raleigh visited him there, and Spenser read to 
Raleigh the first three parts of the poem. Raleigh was de- 
lighted with it and made Spenser go back to London with him 
and publish all that was finished. Queen Elizabeth was also 
greatly pleased and told her Lord Treasurer to give Spenser a 
generous pension, but the Lord Treasurer was an economical 
person and gave Spenser only half of what the queen had asked. 
That was not enough for Spenser to live upon in London, so he 
went back to Ireland to his castle. 



14 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Spenser employed the years that followed in working busily 
at "The Fairy Queen." Meanwhile he married a beautiful 
Irish girl, writing in her honor a marriage hymn, which is one 
of his most famous poems. He went to London again, pub- 
lished three more parts of "The Fairy Queen," and spent some 
months at the court of Elizabeth, meeting all the great men 
of that day. Here he must have talked with Shakespeare, 
who was already one of the celebrated writers and actors of 
the time. 

A few years after he had returned to his castle, the Irish 
rebellion broke out again. The castle was plundered and 
burned, and his youngest child was lost in the flames. The 
poet with his wife and two young sons were driven out with 
nothing but the clothes that they wore. It is supposed by 
some that parts of "The Fairy Queen," still unfinished, were 
burned in the castle. 

Spenser and his family fled to Cork, and from there he 
went on alone to London, hoping to regain his fortune. But 
the loss of his child, his home, and his property seemed to 
have broken his heart, and he died in an inn near London. 
This was in the year 1599. His body was buried in West- 
minster Abbey among the tombs of the kiugs and statesmen 
of England and near the grave of Chaucer, whom he always 
called his master. 

"The Fairy Queen" was never finished as Spenser planned 
it. But each part — or "book," as it is called — is complete 
in itself. The story runs that the Fairy Queen, — who was 
called Gloriana, — once held a feast that lasted twelve days. 
Upon each of these twelve days some person came asking for 
help, and the queen replied to each by sending forth a knight 
to give such aid as he might. The adventures of each of the 
twelve knights were to form a book. Of the twelve books 
only six were finished. 

Book One tells of the adventures of the Red Cross Knight, 
who seems to be St. George. A fair lady called Una, clothed 



EDMUND SPENSER 15 

all in black, enters the court and falls upon her knees before 
the queen, saying that her father and mother, an honorable 
king and queen, have been for years shut up in a brazen castle 
guarded by a frightful dragon. She begs for a knight to go 
and fight the dragon and rescue her parents. Behind her 
comes a dwarf, leading a war horse laden with all the armor 
and weapons of a knight, and the Lady Una says that her 
knight must wear this armor or he cannot win. 

The Red Cross Knight is appointed by the Fairy Queen 
to go upon this quest. He seems at first to be an awk- 
ward sort of fellow, but when he has put on the armor he 
becomes at once the goodliest man in all that company. He 
and Una go forth together and have many adventures. 

Spenser had a hidden meaning beneath all these stories, 
but sometimes it is hard to follow. The English is not so 
difficult to understand as that of Chaucer. It was spelled 
quite differently from the English of to-day, but there are not, 
after all, a great many strange words. After changing 
the spelling, the first part of the poem, telling how the Knight 
of the Red Cross rode across the plain, and fought his first 
battle, reads like this : 



THE RED CROSS KNIGHT'S FIRST BATTLE 

A gentle knight was pricking 1 on the plain, 

Yclad 2 in mighty arms and silver shield, 

Wherein old dints 3 of deep wounds did remain, 

The cruel marks of many a bloody field ; 

Yet arms till that time did he never wield. 

His angry steed did chide 4 his foaming bit, 

As much disdaining to the curb to yield : 

Full jolly 5 knight he seemed, and fair did sit, 

As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit. 

galloping 2 clad 3 dents 4 champ 5 handsome 



1 6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Upon a great adventure he was bound 
That greatest Gloriana to him gave — 
That greatest glorious queen of Fairy Land — 
To win him worship x and her grace to have, 
5 Which of all earthly things he most did* crave, 
And ever as he rode his heart did yearn 
To prove his puissance 2 in battle brave 
Upon his foe, and his new force to learn — 

Upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stern. 

10 A lovely lady rode him fair beside 

Upon a lowly ass more white than snow, 

Yet she much whiter ; but the same did hide 

Under a veil, that wimpled 3 was full low ; 

And over all a black stole 4 she did throw, 
15 As one that inly mourned, so was she sad, 

And heavy sat upon her palfrey 5 slow ; 

Seemed in heart some hidden care she had, 
And by her, in a line, a milkwhite lamb she led. 

Behind her, far away, a dwarf did lag, 
20 That lazy seemed, in being ever last, 
Or wearied by the bearing of her bag 
Of needments 6 at his back. Thus, as they passed, 
The day with clouds was sudden overcast 
And angry Jove a hideous storm of rain 
25 Did pour into the lap of Earth so fast 

That every wight 7 to shun it did constrain, 
And this fair couple eke 8 to shroud 9 themselves were fain. 10 



1 fame 4 a long cloak 7 person 10 desirous 

2 strength a small saddle horse 8 likewise 
8 drawn down 8 necessaries 9 shelter 



EDMUND SPENSER 17 

Enforced to seek some covert nigh at hand, 

A shady grove not far away they spied, 

That promised aid the tempest to withstand ; 

Whose lofty trees, all clad with summer's pride, 

Did spread so broad that heaven's light did hide 5 

Not pierceable with power of any star : 

And all within were paths and alleys 1 wide, 

With footing worn, and leading inward far, 
Fair harbor that them seems ; so in they entered are. 

And forth they pass with pleasure forward led, 10 

Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony, 
Which, therein shrouded 2 from the tempest dread, 
Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky : 
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, 
The dancing pine, the cedar proud and tall, 15 

The vine-clad elm, the poplar, never dry, 
The builder, oak, sole king of forests all ; 

The aspen, good for staves ; the cypress, funeral. 3 



Led with delight, they thus beguile the way, 
Until the blustering storm is overblown ; 
When, thinking to return whence they did stray, 
They cannot find that path which first was shown, 
But wander to and fro in ways unknown, 
Furthest from end then, when they nearest ween, 4 
That makes them doubt their wits be not their own ; 
So many paths, so many turnings seen, 

That which of them to take in diverse 5 doubt they been. 

At last resolving forward still to fare, 7 
Till that some end they find, or in or out, 

1 passages 3 solemn 5 various 7 proceed 

2 sheltered 4 think 6 were 



1 8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

That path they take that beaten seemed most brave, 1 
And like to lead the labyrinth about ; 
Which when by track they hunted had throughout, 
At length it brought them to a hollow cave 
5 Amid the thickest woods. The champion stout 
Eftsoon 2 dismounted from his courser brave, 
And to the dwarf awhile his needless s.pear he gave. 

"Be well aware," quoth then that lady mild, 
"Lest sudden mischief ye too rash provoke : 
10 The danger hid, the place unknown and wild, 

Breeds dreadful doubts. Oft fire is without smoke, 
And peril without show ; therefore your stroke, 
Sir Knight, withhold till further trial made." 
"Ah, lady," said he, "shame were to revoke 3 
i 5 The forward footing for a hidden shade : 

Virtue gives herself light through darkness for to wade." 



"Yea, but," quoth she, "the peril of the place 
I better wot 4 than you : though now too late 
To wish you back return with foul disgrace, 
Yet wisdom warns, whilst foot is in the gate, 
To stay the step, ere forced to retreat. 
This is the Wandering Wood, this Error's den, 
A monster vile, whom God and man does hate : 
Therefore I say beware." "Fly ! fly !" quoth then 

The fearful 5 dwarf, "this is no place for living men." 

But full of fire and greedy hardiment 6 

The youthful knight could not for aught be stayed : 
But forth unto the darksome hole he went, 
And looked in : his glistering armor made 

1 fine :i I urn back ■'■ frightened 

2 forthwith 4 know 6 courage 



EDMUND SPENSER 19 



A little glooming light, much like a shade ; 
By which he saw the ugly monster plain 
Half like a serpent horribly displayed. 



Which, when the valiant knight perceived, he leapt 

As lion fierce upon the flying prey, 5 

And with his trenchant 2 blade her boldly kept 
From turning back, and forced her to stay : 
Therewith enraged, she loudly 'gan to bray, 
And turning fierce, her speckled tail advanced, 
Threatening her angry sting, him to dismay ; IO 

Who, naught aghast, his mighty hand enhanced : 2 

The stroke down from her head unto her shoulder glanced. 

Much daunted with that blow, her sense was dazed : 
Yet kindling rage herself she gathered round, 
And all at once her beastly body raised I5 

With doubled forces high above the ground : 
Though wrapping up her wreathed folds around, 
Leapt fierce upon his shield, and her huge train 
All suddenly about his body wound, 
That hand or foot to stir he strove in vain. 20 

God help the man so wrapped in Error's endless train ! 

His lady, sad to see his sore constraint, 3 

Cried out, "Now, now, Sir Knight, show what ye be ! 

Add faith unto your force, and be not faint : 

Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee !" 25 

That when he heard, in great perplexity 

His soul did fret for grief and high disdain, 

And knitting all his force, got one hand free, 

Wherewith he gripped her throat with so great pain 

That soon to loose her wicked bands did her constrain. 



30 



cutting 2 raised up 3 necessity 



20 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Thus ill beset and fearful more of shame 
Than of the certain peril he stood in, 
Half furious unto his foe he came, 
Resolved in mind all suddenly to win 
Or soon to lose, before he once would lin : * 
And struck at her with more than manly force, 
That from her body, full of filthy sin, 
He reft 2 her hateful head without remorse : 

A stream of coal-black blood forth gushed from her corse. 3 



10 Then mounted he upon his steed again 

And with the lady backward sought to wend. 
That path he kept which beaten was most plain, 
Nor ever would to any byway bend, 
But still did follow one unto the end : 

15 The which at last out of the wood them brought. 

So forward on his way, with God for friend, 
He passed forth and new adventure sought : 
Long way he traveled before he heard of aught. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. About how long was it from the death of Chaucer to the birth of 
Spenser? Name some important things that happened during that 
time. Who printed the first book in English? 2. Write or tell what 
you can of Spenser's life. 3. Who was the ruler of England at this 
time, and what can you say of the court and the people? Name at 
least one great man who lived at the. same time as Spenser— more if 
you can. 4. Tell briefly what "The Fairy Queen" is about. 5. Tell 
some of the main points in the story of Una and the Red Cross Knight. 
What other name did the Red Cross Knight have? 

6. Supply modern words for those marked in the text by index 
figures. Are Spenser's words or the modern words the better? Give 

1 stop 2 cut off 8 dead body 



EDMUND SPENSER 21 

reasons for your answer. 7. Explain "into the lap of Earth" etc., line 
25, page 16. This manner of expression is called personification. 
It is a fanciful or imaginative way of referring to an inanimate thing or 
idea as if it were a person. Here the Earth is represented as a person, 
and the rain as falling into her lap. Personification is a figure of speech, 
that is, it expresses something in figurative or imaginative form. 8. What 
examples of personification do you find in the first stanza on page 17? 

9. Give briefly the details of this picture of the grove, — as (a) tall 
trees shutting out the light, (b) paths worn by the feet, (r) birds singing, 
etc. 10. How should we express "That makes them doubt their wits 
be not their own"? (In modern English it is improper to use a double 
negative as here ; but in old English it was quite common.) n. What is 
a labyrinth ? 1 2. What figure in " breeds dreadful doubts," line 1 1, page 18 ? 
13. Explain the reason for the lady's saying "Oft fire is without smoke." 
(This, and "Virtue gives herself light" etc. may be considered as prov- 
erbs.) 

14. In line 5, page 19, "As lion fierce" etc., we have another figure of 
speech. Here the knight does not leap upon the dragon actually as a 
lion leaps, but as fiercely as a lion. A comparison of this sort that 
expresses a fanciful likeness between two things is called a simile (sim'i le). 
It is generally introduced by like or as. Does this comparison with the 
lion add anything to the strength of the picture? 15. What do you think 
was Spenser's meaning, in having the knight fight the dragon? What 
was the dragon's name? 16. What other fights with dragons or monsters 
do you remember having read about ? 

17. In line 14, "kindling rage," we have another figure of speech, 
called a metaphor. The metaphor expresses a fanciful comparison, 
like the simile, but does it more briefly, by using the name of a thing or 
idea in place of another that has some resemblance to it. Here the 
dragon's rage was not actually kindling, but was rising like a fire. If the 
poet had said, "Her rage was like a kindling fire," it would have been a 
simile. A metaphor, then, is a condensed simile, making a comparison 
without using like or as to introduce it. 18. W r rite out each stanza of 
this selection in good modern English prose. 

The story of the Fairy Queen is retold by Alfred J. Church in a book 
called "The Fairy Queen and her Knights." Part of the story, told 
largely in Spenser's language and in verse, will be found in N. G. Royde- 
Smith's "Una and the Red Cross Knight." 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

i 564-1616 

In the little village of Stratford on Avon, on a spring morn- 
ing in the year 1564, a boy was born in the home of John and 
Mary Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was a man of some 
importance in Stratford. He was one of the town officers 
and a dealer in corn, meat, leather, and other products of the 
farm. Some say he was a maker of gloves, but that was 
probably only a part of his business. Mary Shakespeare 
was the daughter of a wealthy farmer not far from town. 

The Shakespeares lived in a well-built house of rough stone, 
covered outside with plaster and crossed with heavy beams of 
dark oak. The house is still standing and is visited every year 
by hundreds of travelers. Do you ask why? It is because 
of this boy who was born in it, three hundred and fifty years 
ago, and who afterwards became the greatest of English 
poets. His name was William Shakespeare. 

Other children came into the Shakespeare family, and 
it was a pleasant life that they led in the old plastered house 
with the dark-oak beams. The Avon River flowed quietly 
through the meadows at the end of the next street, and the 
country all around seemed like a great playground. For 
several years young Will attended the Stratford Grammar 
School, where he learned Latin and busied himself with such 
other studies as the boys of that day were expected to take up. 

Strolling companies of players sometimes came to Strat- 
ford, and as Will's father was the officer to whom they came 
to get permission to act their plays, it is probable that Will 
saw them and was greatly interested, for he loved above all 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 23 

other things to see a play. The plays were usually acted out 
of doors, or perhaps in the courtyard of some inn, and the 
people who looked on either stood, or if it were in an inn 
court, may have looked out of the windows or sat upon the 
balconies that often stretched around the sides of the court 
at each story of the inn. The players would sometimes raise 
a rough stage of boards ; sometimes they would act their 
play upon the green turf ; but there was hardly any scenery. 
The audience had to imagine a great deal, but the actors wore 
fine costumes and made a great show in their silks and velvets ; 
and the whole town always poured out to see them. 

When Will Shakespeare was about eleven, it was whispered 
in Stratford one afternoon that Queen Elizabeth was to visit 
the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth Castle, only about sixteen 
miles away. The Earl of Leicester was one of the greatest 
lords of his time. It was he, you will remember, who helped 
young Edmund Spenser. And this visit of the queen was to 
be the most magnificent affair ever seen in that part of the 
country. All the people for miles around hurried to Kenil- 
worth to see the show. 

We may be pretty sure that John Shakespeare was there, 
and very likely he took young Will with him. There were 
plays and shows of all kinds, like a great fair, and above all 
there was the queen herself, who smiled upon the people as 
she passed. 

When William was about thirteen, a change came over 
his father's fortunes. John Shakespeare fell into debt and 
had to sell the larger part of his property; while the boy 
was obliged to leave school and earn his own living. We do 
not know just what he did. Some say he worked at the 
butcher's trade, but the most important thing that he did 
was to notice carefully all the people whom he met, and the 
river, and the sky, and the meadows, so that he knew how 
every sort of man and woman looked and behaved, and how 
every flower grew, and what every change of season brought. 



24 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Nothing escaped his eye, and he stored away in his memory 
all that he saw, so that years later he was able to recall it 
and put it into his plays. 

When he was little more than eighteen he married Anne 
Hathaway, a farmer's daughter living at Shottery, only. a 
short walk across the fields from Stratford. Before long they 
had a family of three children. People in Stratford thought 
Will Shakespeare ought to spend less time in hunting deer and 
tramping over the fields and ought to stick to some honest 
trade. There is a story that he once got into trouble by 
hunting in a piece of woods belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy, 
and that Sir Thomas had him arrested. But Shakespeare 
could not think of settling down to the life of a village trades- 
man. There was something in him that told him to look 
farther, and so one day he said good-by to his wife and 
children and started off for London to seek his fortune. 

There is a story that when he reached London he went 
straight to the theater, determined to get work of some sort 
there ; and that finding nothing better to do, he began by 
holding the horses of the fine gentlemen who came to see the 
plays. It is said that a little later he was employed to call 
out the names of the actors and the pieces, and after a time 
was given a small part to act. But he soon showed that he 
could make himself most useful in changing old plays so that 
they could be more easily acted. That was something which 
the actors themselves could not do. Every old play that 
Shakespeare took in hand he made over into something 
different and far better. Then he began to write plays him- 
self, and almost before he knew it he was famous. All the 
actors wanted to act Shakespeare's plays, and all the people 
wanted to see them acted, because there was life in them, and 
because they showed men and women as they really were. 

In spite of his fame Shakespeare did not grow proud. He 
worked hard, writing at one time of his life about two plays 
each year. He returned often to Stratford to see his family, 



26 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

bought as good a house for them as could be found in town, 
paid his father's debts, and when he had earned all that he 
thought he needed, retired to Stratford and spent the rest of 
his days looking after his farm and living the life of a country 
gentleman. He died there at the age of fifty-two, the most 
famous writer of his time and of all time. Every one loved 
him. He was kind, gentle, full of fun, a good friend, and a 
delightful companion. 

Most of his plays are poems written in blank verse — that 
is, verse without rime. Parts of them are in prose. The 
greatest of the plays are perhaps "The Merchant of Venice," 
"Julius Caesar," "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," and 
"The Tempest." 

A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND 

[The narrative portions, in prose, are from Charles and Mary Lamb's 
"Tales from Shakespeare," published in London in 1807; the dramatic 
portions are from Shakespeare's "The Tempest."] 

There was a certain island in the sea, the only inhabitants 
of which were an old man, whose name was Prospero, and his 
daughter Miranda, a very beautiful young lady. She came to 
this island so young that she had no memory of having seen 

5 any other human face than her father's. 

They lived in a cave or cell, made out of a rock ; it was 
divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called 
his study ; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of 
magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned 

10 men : and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to 
him ; for, being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, 
which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who 
died there a short time before his arrival, Prospero, by virtue 
of his art, released many good spirits that Sycorax had im- 

15 prisoned in the bodies of large trees, because they had refused 
to execute her wicked commands. These gentle spirits were 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 27 

ever after obedient to the will of Prospero. Of these, Ariel 
was the chief. 

The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his 
nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in 
tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him 5 
a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. 
This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strange mis- 
shapen thing, far less human in form than an ape : he took 
him home to his cell and taught him to speak ; and Prospero 
would have been very kind to him, but the bad nature which 10 
Caliban inherited from his mother Sycorax would not let 
him learn anything good or useful ; therefore he was em- 
ployed like a slave, to fetch wood and do the most laborious 
offices, and Ariel had the charge of compelling him to these 
services. 15 

When Caliban was lazy and neglected his work, Ariel (who 
was invisible to all eyes but Prospero's) would come slyly and 
pinch him, and sometimes tumble him down in the mire; 
and then Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths 
at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a 20 
hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared 
the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a 
variety of such vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, 
whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero com- 
manded him to do. 25 

Having these powerful spirits obedient to his will, Prospero 
could by their means command the winds and the waves of 
the sea. By his orders they raised a violent storm, in the 
midst of which, and struggling with the wild sea-waves that 
every moment threatened to swallow it up, he showed his 30 
daughter a fine large ship, which he told her was full of living 
beings like themselves. "0 my dear father," said she, "if 
by your art you have raised this dreadful storm, have pity 
on their sad distress. See ! the vessel will be dashed to pieces. 
Poor souls ! they will all perish. If I had power, I would sink 35 



28 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the sea beneath the earth, rather than the good ship should 
be destroyed, with all the precious souls within her." 

"Be not so amazed, daughter Miranda," said Prospero ; 
"there is no harm done. I have so ordered it that no person 
5 in the ship shall receive any hurt. What I have done has 
been in care of you, my dear child. You are ignorant who 
you are, or where you came from, and you know no more 
of me but that I am your father and live in this poor 
cave. Can you remember a time before you came to this 

10 cell ? I think you cannot, for you were not then three years 
of age." 

"Certainly I can, sir," replied Miranda. 
"By what?" asked Prospero; "by any other house or 
person? Tell me what you can remember, my child." 

15 Miranda said, "It seems to me like the recollection of a 
dream. But had I not once four or five women who attended 
upon me?" 

Prospero answered, "You had, and more. How is it that 
this still lives in your mind? Do you remember how you 

20 came here?" 

"No, sir," said Miranda, "I remember nothing more." 
"Twelve years ago, Miranda," continued Prospero, "I 
was duke of Milan, and you were a princess, and my only 
heir. I had a younger brother, whose name was Antonio, to 

25 whom I trusted everything ; and as I was fond of retirement 
and deep study, I commonly left the management of my state 
affairs to your uncle, my false brother — for so indeed he 
proved. I, neglecting all worldly ends, buried among my 
books, did dedicate my whole time to the bettering of 

30 my mind. My brother Antonio, being thus in possession of my 
power, began to think himself the duke indeed. The opportu- 
nity I gave him of making himself popular among my subjects 
awakened in his bad nature a proud ambition to deprive me 
of my dukedom : this he soon effected with the aid of the king 

35 of Naples, a powerful prince, who was my enemy." 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 29 

"Wherefore," said Miranda, "did they not that hour de- 
stroy us?" 

"My child," answered her father, "they durst not, so dear 
was the love that my people bore me. Antonio carried us on 
board a ship, and when we were some leagues out at sea, he 5 
forced us into a small boat, without either tackle, sail, or mast : 
there he left us, as he thought, to perish. But a kind lord of 
my court, one Gonzalo, who loved me, had privately placed in 
the boat, water, provisions, apparel, and some books which I 
prize above my dukedom." 10 

"O my father," said Miranda, "what a trouble must I 
have been to you then !" 

"No, my love," said Prospero, "you were a little cherub 
that did preserve me. Your innocent smiles made me to 
bear up against my misfortunes. Our food lasted till we 15 
landed on this desert island, since when my chief delight has 
been in teaching you, Miranda, and well have you profited 
by my instructions." 

"Heaven thank you, my dear father," said Miranda. 
"Now pray tell me, sir, your reason for raising this sea- 20 
storm?" 

"Know then," said her father, "that by means of this 
storm, my enemies, the king of Naples, and my cruel brother, 
are cast ashore upon this island." 

Having so said, Prospero gently touched his daughter with 25 
his magic wand, and she fell fast asleep ; for the spirit Ariel 
just then presented himself before his master, to give an ' 
account of the tempest and how he had disposed of the ship's 
company, and though the spirits were always invisible to 
Miranda, Prospero did not choose she should hear him holding 30 
converse, as would seem to her, with the empty air. 

"Well, my brave spirit," said Prospero to Ariel, "how have 
you performed your task?" 

Ariel gave a lively description of the storm and of the terrors 
of the mariners ; and how the king's son Ferdinand was the 3s 



30 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

first who leaped into the sea ; and his father thought he saw 
his dear son swallowed up by the waves and lost. " But he is 
safe," said Ariel, "in a corner of the isle, sitting with his arms 
folded, sadly lamenting the loss of the king his father, whom 
5 he concludes drowned. Not a hair of his head is injured, and 
his princely garments, though drenched in the sea-waves, 
look fresher than before." 

"That's my delicate Ariel," said Prospero. "Bring him 
hither : my daughter must see this young prince. Where is 
iothe king and my brother?" 

"I left them," answered Ariel, "searching for Ferdinand, 

whom they have little hopes of finding, thinking they saw him 

perish. Of the ship's crew not one is missing, though each 

one thinks himself the only one saved ; and the ship, though 

15 invisible to them, is safe in the harbor." 

"Ariel," said Prospero, "thy charge is faithfully performed ; 
but there is more work yet." 

"Is there more work?" said Ariel. "Let me remind you, 
master, you have promised me my liberty. I pray, remember, 
20 1 have done you worthy service, told you no lies, made no 
mistakes, served you without grudge or grumbling." 

"How now ! " said Prospero. "You do not recollect what a 
torment I freed you from. Have you forgot the wicked witch 
Sycorax, who with age and envy was almost bent double? 
25 Where was she born? Speak; tell me." 

"Sir, in Algiers," said Ariel. 

"O was she so?" said Prospero. "I must recount what 
you have been, which I find you do not remember. This bad 
witch, Sycorax, for her witchcrafts too terrible to enter human 
30 hearing, was banished from Algiers and here left by the 
sailors ; and because you were a spirit too delicate to execute 
her wicked commands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found 
you howling. This torment, remember, I did free you from." 

"Pardon me, dear master," said Ariel, ashamed to seem un- 
3 5 grateful; "I will obey your commands." 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 31 

"Do so," said Prospero, "and I will set you free." He then 
gave orders what further he would have him do ; and away 
went Ariel, first to where he had left Ferdinand, and found him 
still sitting on the grass in the same melancholy posture. 

"O my young gentleman," said Ariel, when he saw him, 5 
"I will soon move you. You must be brought, I find, for the 
Lady Miranda to have a sight of your pretty person. Come, 
sir, follow me." He then began singing : 

Come unto these yellow sands, 

And then take hands : 10 

Curtsied when you have and kiss'd 

The wild waves whist : l 
Foot it featly 2 here and there, 
And, sweet sprites, the burden 3 bear. 

Hark, hark ! 15 

Burden {from all sides) . Bow-wow. 
Ariel. The watch-dogs bark : 

Burden. Bow-wow. 

Ariel. Hark, hark ! I hear 

The strain of strutting chanticleer 20 

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow. 

Ferdinand. Where should this music be? i' the air or 
the earth? 
It sounds no more : and, sure, it waits upon 
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank, 
Weeping against 4 the king my father's wreck, 25 

This music crept by me upon the waters, 
Allaying both their fury and my passion 
With its sweet air : thence I have follow'd it, 
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 't is gone. 
No, it begins again. ■ 30 

1 silent 3 chorus or refrain 

2 nimbly 4 on account of 



32 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Ariel sings 
Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
Of his bones are coral made; 
Those are pearls that were his eyes : 
Nothing of him that doth fade 
5 But doth suffer a sea-change 

Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell : 
Burden. Ding-dong. 

Ariel. Hark ! now I hear them, — ding-dong, bell. 

10 Ferdinand. The ditty 1 does remember 2 my drowned 
father. 
This is no mortal business nor no sound 
That the earth owes. I hear it now above me. 

Prospero. [To Miranda] The fringed curtains of thine 
eye advance, 
And say what thou see'st yond. 

Miranda. What is 't? a spirit? 

15 Ah ! how it looks about ! Believe me, sir, 
It carries a brave 3 form. But 't is a spirit. 

Prospero. No, wench ; 4 it eats and sleeps, and hath such 
senses 
As we have, such. This gallant 5 which thou see'st 
Was in the wreck ; and, but 6 he's something stain'd 
20 With grief, — that's beauty's canker, — thou mightst call him 
A goodly person : he hath lost his fellows, 
And strays about to find them. 

Miranda. I might call him 

A thing divine ; for nothing natural 
I ever saw so noble. 

Prospero. [Aside] It goes on, I see, 
25 As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit ! I'll free thee 
Within two days for this. 

1 song s handsome s gay young man 

2 refer to 4 girl « except that 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 33 

Ferdinand. [Seeing Miranda] Most sure, the goddess 
On whom these airs attend ! Vouchsafe * my prayer 
May know if you remain upon this island ; 
And that you will some good instruction give 
How I may bear me 2 here : my prime request, 5 

Which I do last pronounce, is, you wonder ! 
If you be maid or no ? 

Miranda. No wonder, sir ; 

But certainly a maid. 

Prospero was well pleased to find they admired each other, 
but to try Ferdinand's constancy, he resolved to throw some 10 
difficulties in their way : therefore advancing forward, he 
addressed the prince with a stern air : 

Prospero. I charge thee 

That thou attend me : Thou dost here usurp 
The name thou ow'st 3 not ; and hast put thyself 15 

Upon this island as a spy, to win it 
From me, the lord on 't. 

Ferdinand. No, as I am a man. 

Miranda. There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
If the ill spirit have so fair a house, 
Good things will strive to dwell with 't. 

Prospero. Follow me. 20 

Speak not you for him ; he's a traitor. Come ; 
I'll manacle 4 thy neck and feet together : 
Sea- water shalt thou drink ; thy food shall be 
The fresh-brook muscles, 5 wither'd roots, and husks 
Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow. 

Ferdinand. No ; 25 

I will resist such entertainment till 
Mine enemy has more power. 

[He draws his sword, and is charmed from moving] 

1 grant 3 ownest 6 shellfish 

2 behave myself 4 fetter 



34 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Miranda. O dear father, 



Make not too rash a trial of him, for 
He's gentle, 1 and not fearful. 

Prospero. What, I say, 

My foot my tutor ! 2 Put thy sword up, traitor ; 
5 Who mak'st a show, but dar'st not strike, thy conscience 
Is so possess'd with guilt : come from thy ward ; 3 
For I can here disarm thee with this stick, 
And make thy weapon drop. 

Miranda. Beseech you, father ! 

Prospero. Hence ! hang not on my garments. 

Miranda. Sir, have pity ; 

I'll be his surety. 
10 Prospero. Silence ! one word more 

Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What, 
An advocate for an impostor ! hush ! 
Thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he, 
Having seen but him and Caliban : foolish wench ! 
15 To th' most of men this is a Caliban, 4 
And they to him are angels. 5 

Miranda. My affections 

Are, then, most humble ; I have no ambition 
To see a goodlier man. 

Prospero. Come on ; obey : 

Thy nerves are in their infancy again, 
And have no vigor in them. 
20 Ferdinand. So they are : 

My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. 
My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, 
The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats 
To whom I am subdu'd, are but light to me, 
25 Might I but through my prison once a day 
Behold this maid : 

1 brave 3 guard (position of the sword) 4 as ugly as Caliban 

2 My inferior instruct roe ! 5 like angels, by comparison 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 35 

Prospero kept Ferdinand not long confined within the cell : 
he soon brought out his prisoner and set him a severe task 
to perform, taking care to let his daughter know the hard 
labor he had imposed on him, and then pretending to go into 
his study, he secretly watched them both. 5 

Enter Ferdinand, bearing a log 

Ferdinand. There be some sports are painful, and their 
labor 
Delight in them sets off : l some kinds of baseness 
Are nobly undergone ; and most poor matters 
Point to rich ends. This my mean task 

Would be as heavy to me as odious, but IO 

The mistress which I serve quickens 2 what's dead, 
And makes my labors pleasures : O, she is 
Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed, 
And he's compos'd of harshness. I must remove 
Some thousands of these logs and pile them up *5 

Upon a sore injunction : 3 my sweet mistress 
Weeps when she sees me work ; and says such baseness 
Had never like executor. 4 . . 

Enter Miranda ; and Prospero at a distance, unseen 

Miranda. Alas, now, pray you, 

Work not so hard : I would the lightning had 
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin'd 5 to pile ! 2 ° 

Pray, set it down and rest you : when this burns, 
'T will weep for having wearied you. My father 
Is hard at study ; pray, now, rest yourself : 
He's safe for these three hours. 

Ferdinand. most dear mistress, 

The sun will set before I shall discharge 25 

What I must strive to do. 

1 offsets 3 strict command 6 commanded 

2 makes alive 4 such a doer 



36 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Miranda. If you'll sit down, 

I'll bear your logs the while : pray, give me that ; 
I'll carry it to the pile. 

Ferdinand. No, precious creature ; 

I had rather crack my sinews, break my back, 
5 Than you should such dishonor undergo, 
While I sit lazy by. 

Miranda. It would become me 

As well as it does you : and I should do it 
With much more ease ; for my good will is to it, 
And yours it is against. You look wearily. 1 

Ferdinand. No, noble mistress ; 't is fresh morning with 
10 me 

When you are by at night. I do beseech you, — 
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers, — 
• What is your name ? 

Miranda. Miranda : — O my father, 

I have broke your hest 2 to say so ! 

i 5 Prospero, who was standing in the background unseen, only 
smiled at this first instance of his daughter's disobedience, for 
having by his magic art caused his daughter to fall in love so 
suddenly, he was not angry that she showed her love by for- 
getting to obey his commands. And he listened well pleased 

20 to a long speech of Ferdinand's, in which the young man 
professed to love her above all the ladies he ever saw. 

Then Ferdinand, in another fine long speech, — for young 
princes speak in courtly phrases, — told the innocent Miranda 
that he was heir to the crown of Naples, and that she should be 

25 his queen. 

"Ah! sir," said she, "I am a fool to weep at what I am 
glad of. I will answer you in plain and holy innocence. I 
am 3 your wife if you will marry me." 

1 weary 2 command 3 will be 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 37 

Prospero prevented Ferdinand's thanks by appearing visible 
before them. 

"Fear nothing, my child," said he; "I have overheard, 
and approve of all you have said. And Ferdinand, if I have 
too severely used you, I will make you rich amends by giving 5 
you my daughter. All your vexations were but trials of your 
love, and you have nobly stood the test." He then, telling 
them that he had business which required his presence, desired 
they would sit down and talk together till he returned ; and this 
command Miranda seemed not at all disposed to disobey. 10 

When Prospero left them, he called his spirit Ariel, who 
quickly appeared before him, eager to relate what he had done 
with Prospero's brother and the king of Naples. Ariel said 
he had left them almost out of their senses with fear at the 
strange things he had caused them to see and hear. When 15 
fatigued with wandering about and famished for want of food, 
he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, 
just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before 
them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, 
and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amaze- 20 
ment, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of 
their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom and leav- 
ing him and his infant daughter to perish in the sea ; saying 
that for this cause these terrors were suffered to afflict them. 

The king of Naples and Antonio the false brother repented 25 
the injustice they had done to Prospero ; and Ariel told his 
master he was certain their penitence was sincere, and that he, 
though a spirit, could not but pity them. 

"Then bring them hither, Ariel," said Prospero: "if you, 
who are but a spirit, feel for their distress, shall not I, who am 30 
a human being like themselves, have compassion on them?" 

Prospero. Fetch me the hat and rapier * in my cell ; 
I will disease 2 me, and myself present 

1 sword 2 strip off my disguise 



38 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

As I was sometime * Milan : 2 quickly, spirit ; 
Thou shalt ere long be free. 

Ariel sings and helps to attire him 
Where the bee sucks, there suck I: 
5 In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 

There I couch 3 when owls do cry. 
On the bat's back I do fly 
After summer merrily. 
Merrily, merrily shall I live now 
10 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. 

Prospero. Why, that's my dainty Ariel ! I shall miss 
thee; 
But yet thou shalt have freedom : so, so, so. 
To the king's ship, invisible as thou art : 
There shalt thou find the mariners asleep 
15 Under the hatches ; the master and the boatswain 
Being awake, enforce them to this place, 
And presently, I prithee. 

Ariel. I drink the air before me, and return 
Or ere 4 your pulse twice beat. 

20 Ariel soon returned with the king, Antonio, and old Gonzalo 
in their train, who had followed him wondering at the wild 
music he played in the air to draw them on to his master's 
presence. This Gonzalo was the same who had so kindly 
provided Prospero formerly with books and provisions, when 

25 his wicked brother left him, as he thought, to perish in an 
open boat in the sea. 

Grief and terror had so stupefied their senses that they 
did not know Prospero. He first discovered himself to the 
good old Gonzalo, calling him the preserver of his life ; and 

30 then his brother and the king knew that he was the injured 
Prospero. 

1 formerly 2 when Duke of Milan 3 lie * before 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 39 

Antonio with tears and sad words of sorrow and true 
repentance implored his brother's forgiveness, and the king 
expressed his sincere remorse for having assisted Antonio to 
depose his brother. Prospero forgave them, and upon their 
engaging to restore his dukedom, he said to the king of Naples, 5 
"I have a gift in store for you too"; and opening a door, 
showed him 'his son Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda. 

Nothing could exceed the joy of the father and the son at 
this unexpected meeting, for they each thought the other 
drowned in the storm. 10 

"O wonder!" said Miranda, "what noble creatures these 
are ! It must surely be a brave 1 world that has such people 
in it." 

• The king of Naples was almost as much astonished at the 
beauty and excellent graces of the young Miranda as his son 15 
had been. "Who is this maid?" said he; "she seems the 
goddess that has parted us and brought us thus together." 
"No, sir," answered Ferdinand, smiling to find his father had 
fallen into the same mistake that he had done when he first 
saw Miranda, "she is a mortal, but by immortal Providence 20 
she is mine ; I chose her when I could not ask you my father, 
for your consent, not thinking you were alive. She is the 
daughter to this Prospero, who is the famous duke of Milan, of 
whose renown I have heard so much but never saw him till 
now. Of him I have received a new life : he has made himself 25 
to me a second father, giving me this dear lady." 

"Then I must be her father," said the king ; "but oh ! how 
oddly 2 will it sound, that I must ask my child forgiveness." 

"No more of that," said Prospero : "let us not remember 
our troubles past, since they so happily have ended." And 30 
then Prospero embraced his brother, and again assured him 
of his forgiveness ; and said that a wise overruling Providence 
had permitted that he should be driven from his poor dukedom 
of Milan, that his daughter might inherit the crown of Naples, 

1 beautiful 2 odd 



4 o EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

for that by their meeting in this desert island, it had happened 
that the king's son had loved Miranda. 

These kind words which Prospero spoke, meaning to com- 
fort his brother, so rilled Antonio with shame and remorse 
5 that he wept and was unable to speak ; and the kind old Gon- 
zalo wept to see this joyful reconciliation, and prayed for 
blessings on the young couple. 

Prospero now told them that their ship was safe in the 
harbor, and the sailors all on board her, and that he and his 
10 daughter would accompany them home the next morning. 
Before Prospero left the island, he dismissed Ariel from his 
service, to the great joy of that lively little spirit ; who, 
though he had been a faithful servant to his master, was always 
longing to enjoy his free liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the 
i 5 air, like a wild bird, under green trees, among pleasant fruits 
and sweet-smelling flowers. "My quaint Ariel," said Pros- 
pero to the little sprite, when he made him free, "I shall miss 
you; yet you shall have your freedom." "Thank you, my 
dear master," said Ariel; "but give me leave to attend your 
20 ship home with prosperous gales, before you bid farewell to 
the assistance of your faithful spirit." 

For Prospero nothing now remained but to revisit his 
native land, to take possession of his dukedom, and to witness 
the happy nuptials of his daughter and Prince Ferdinand. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Write or tell the story of Shakespeare's life. 2. Tell how plays 
were acted in Shakespeare's time, and anything that you know about 
the players, the stage, and the theaters. 3. Name six of Shakespeare's 
plays. 4. Tell briefly the story of Prospero and Miranda, and how they 
came upon this island. 5. What did Prospero study and how did he 
apply it ? 6. Was magic believed in at the time that Shakespeare wrote 
this play ? Do you think the play would have seemed more reasonable 
to an audience of that day than of this? 

7. Put the words of Ariel's song, page 31, into their natural prose 
order, and substitute more common words for those that are unusual. 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 41 

To whom is Ariel singing? What is the "burden," and who sings it? 
8. What omission is indicated by the apostrophe in line 24, page 31 ? 
(In Shakespeare's time it was considered proper to abbreviate in, of, and 
many other words that we now write in full.) 9. Notice the repetition 
of the/ at the beginnings of words in line 1, page 32. This is called 
alliteration, and adds much to the musical effect of verse. What ex- 
amples of alliteration do you find in the first stanza of the song, on 
page 31 ? Note also that the "sea-change" is purely fanciful. 

10. Explain: "The fringed curtains of thine eye advance"; "that's 
beauty's canker." (Grief is like a canker or sore which disfigures beauty.) 
it. Why did Miranda think Ferdinand was a spirit, or " a thing divine" ? 
12. Explain Prospero's remark "It goes on," etc., page 32, line 24. 
What spirit is referred to in the next line? 13. Would Ferdinand natu- 
rally be as much surprised at the sight of Miranda as Miranda would 
be at the sight of Ferdinand? Why? What, then, does Ferdinand's 
surprise tell you about Miranda's appearance? 14. Explain: "There's 
nothing ill can dwell in such a temple." 

15. Explain: "He's gentle and not fearful" (line 3, page 34). 16. 
What is meant by " My foot my tutor " (line 4)? 17. Explain : " Come 
from thy ward" (line 6); "thy nerves are in their infancy again" 
(line 18). 18. What did Prospero mean by comparing Ferdinand to 
Caliban (line 15)? 19. What does this conversation show you of Mi- 
randa's character? How did she treat her father? 20. What should 
we say to-day' instead of "You look wearily"? (In Shakespeare's day 
the adverb was often used for the adjective.) 21. What does Ferdinand 
mean by "chiefly that I might set it in my prayers"? 22 What traits 
of character are shown in Ariel, and how are they shown ? 23. Memorize 
one or both of Ariel's songs. 

Other good songs from Shakespeare are "I Know a Bank Where the 
Wild Thyme Blows," and "Over Hill, over Dale," from "A Midsummer 
Night's Dream"; "Under the Greenwood Tree," and "Blow, Blow, 
Thou Winter Wind," from "As You Like It"; and "Hark, Hark, the 
Lark," from "Cymbeline." 

If you want, to know more about Shakespeare and his times, read 
Bennett's "Master Skylark." Read also Thomas Bailey Aldrich's 
poem on Shakespeare, called "The King." 



JOHN MILTON 

i 608-1 674 

On a December day in 1608, while Shakespeare was still 
writing his great plays, and Raleigh was in prison, and Eliza- 
beth had been but five years dead, and James the First was 
on the throne of England, another great English poet was born 
in London. He was John Milton. 

Milton's father made a business of preparing law papers, 
and was a prosperous man. He was a Puritan, but not so 
harsh as most of the Puritans of his day, for he loved music 
and taught his boy to love it. He also loved books, and young 
John Milton began to show, when a very small boy, that he 
loved them, too. His father had a private teacher for him, and 
when scarcely more than ten years old the boy wrote good verse 
and sat up later than was good for him over his studies. We 
are told that his father had the maid sit up with him after the 
rest of the family had gone to bed. A recent writer * has said 
of this time of Milton's life : 

We can imagine to ourselves the silence of the house, when 
all the Puritan household had been long abed. We can picture 
the warm, quiet room where sits the little fair-haired boy poring 
over his books by the light of flickering candles, while in the 
shadow a stern-faced, white-capped Puritan woman waits. She 
sits very straight in her chair, her worn hands are folded, her 
eyes heavy with sleep. Sometimes she nods. Then with a start 
she shakes herself wide awake again, murmuring softly that it 
is no hour for any Christian body to be out o' bed, wondering 
that her master should allow so young a child to keep so long 

1 H. E. Marshall, " English Literature." 
42 



JOHN MILTON 43 

over his books. Stiil she has her orders, so with a patient sigh 
she folds her hands again and waits. 

When about twelve years old, young Milton was sent to a 
famous boys' school in London called St. Paul's, and from there 
at fifteen he went to Cambridge University. He was a 
handsome youth, but somewhat proud and independent in 
his ways of thinking. He was said to be the finest scholar 
in the university. 

Milton had planned to be a clergyman of the English 
Church, but strife arose between the Puritans and the Church, 
and Milton was a Puritan. It was at about this time that the 
Pilgrims went to Plymouth, and a few years later that colonies 
of Puritans settled at Salem and Boston, in New England. 
During these troubles King James died, and Charles the First 
became king. 

After finishing his university course and deciding not to 
be a clergyman, Milton was for a time in some doubt what he 
should do, but the more he thought of it the more clear it 
seemed to him that he was born to be a poet. So for five 
years he lived at home in his father's country house at Horton, 
about twenty miles from London, writing poetry and study- 
ing hard, in order better to fit himself for his work. Between 
his hours of study and writing he roamed the fields and woods 
and thought high thoughts and saw marvelous visions, some 
of which he put at once into his verse, while others he kept in 
his memory and wrote out years afterwards. 

It was during these years at Horton that he wrote his 
shorter poems: "L'Allegro," describing happiness; "II 
Penseroso," describing meditation; "Lycidas," praising a 
dear friend who had been drowned ; and "Comus," presenting 
a masque or play, from which we are soon to read. 

But Milton soon tired of this quiet country life. He 
longed to see more of the world, and at last, with money 
which his good father gave him, he set out to travel through 



44 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

France, Switzerland, and Italy. While he was in Italy, news 
came that trouble had sprung up in England between the 
king and the people, and that war might come of it. At this 
he immediately gave up his plans for traveling and writing 
poetry, and went back to England, "For," said he, "I thought 
it base that while my fellow countrymen were fighting at home 
for liberty, I should be traveling at my ease." 

Milton set up a small house in London and took two of his 
young nephews to live with him. He taught them Latin and 
Greek, and soon took also several other boys, making, in fact, 
a small private school. But all the time he kept on writing, 
and now it was not so much poetry as essays and pamphlets, 
to help the cause of the people in their struggle for freedom. 

About this time Milton took a journey to Oxford and came 
back with a young wife. She was but seventeen — about 
half his age — and the two were not well suited to each other. 
She cared nothing for books, and he cared little for the sort 
of merrymaking that she loved. Then, too, young Mary 
Milton and her father and all her father's family were Royalists 
— that is, supporters of the king — while Milton was a 
Puritan. So after a few weeks Mary Milton ran away from 
her husband and went back to live with her own people. 
There she stayed until the king was beaten and his followers 
driven from their homes. Then she came again to her hus- 
band and begged his forgiveness, and he not only took her 
in, but took also her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. 
His own father and his pupils were also living with him at 
that time, so we may imagine that his house was full. 

In the year 1649 the king, Charles the First, was be- 
headed by order of Parliament, and Oliver Cromwell became 
the head of the government, with the title of Lord Protector. 
The leaders of this new Puritan government remembered how 
Milton had helped their cause by his essays and pamphlets, 
and they gave him the important office of Secretary for 
Foreign Tongues. Besides translating the letters from other 



46 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

governments and answering them in Latin, he was obliged to 
reply to all the criticisms and arguments against the govern- 
ment of Cromwell. The work was very hard, and he had to 
write so steadily that soon his eyes began to fail. The doctors 
told him he must stop using them or he would become blind, 
but his friends knew, and he himself knew, that there was no 
one else in England who could do this work so well as he. He 
said that as he had given up his poetry for the service of the 
English people he was now ready to give up his sight. So he 
worked on, and at the age of forty- three he became totally 
blind. 

But his blindness did not stop his work. He dictated 
his letters and arguments to others and was busy from morn- 
ing till night. Then his wife died, leaving to him the care of 
their three little girls, the oldest of whom was but six years 
old. It was a hard task for a blind man already overwhelmed 
with public work. 

Then came the return of the Royalists to power. Charles 
the Second, son of the former king, was placed upon the throne, 
and the Puritans fled for their lives. Some went to America, 
and some were caught and put to death. Milton hid for 
months in the house of a friend. His property was seized, 
his books were burned by the hangman, and at last he was 
caught and put into prison, but the king afterwards pardoned 
him. 

Now that his public work was at an end, he returned to the 
writing of poetry and worked for seven years upon his great 
poem " Paradise Lost," which tells how Satan rebelled against 
God and how Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden. This 
he dictated sometimes to his daughters, sometimes to friends 
who came to see him. " Paradise Lost " won him great honor, 
and famous scholars and statesmen came from far to visit him. 
After finishing this poem he wrote " Paradise Regained" and 
a play telling the story of Samson, the champion of Israel, 
who, like Milton himself, passed his last days in blindness. 



JOHN MILTON 47 

THE ENCHANTED FOREST 

[The masque, or play, of "Comus" was written when Milton was at 
Horton, after having finished his course at the university. The Earl of 
Bridgewater had just been appointed lord lieutenant, or governor, of 
Wales, and with his family was about to take possession of beautiful 
old Ludlow Castle. A great festival was planned at Ludlow in the 
autumn of 1634 to welcome him, and it was suggested that a masque 
be given in which the earl's three children should take part. Milton 
was selected to write the masque.] 

The play begins by supposing that Comus, a pleasure- 
loving spirit, had his palace in a thick wood near Ludlow 
Castle. Now Comus could take at will any form that he 
wished. He was a son of Circe, the nymph who changed 
the companions of Odysseus into swine, and he had, in a 5 
way, his mother's art of turning men and women into beasts, 
at least, he could turn their heads into beasts' heads, and in 
this wood he was always surrounded by a crowd of strange 
creatures with human bodies and the heads of wolves, bears, 
tigers, hogs, and goats. 10 

When travelers came through the wood, weary and thirsty 
with their journey, Comus would meet them and invite them 
to his palace, where he would offer them a wonderful liquor 
from a crystal glass, and whoever drank of this liquor would at 
once lose his human features and take on the likeness of an 15 
animal. They did not know that they had been changed, 
but they simply forgot their home and friends and all that 
had happened to them in the days before and wished only to 
remain there, feasting and drinking, making merry, and serving 
this gay master, Comus. To guide and save the travelers 2c 
from such a fate a good angel called the Attendant Spirit 
was sent down from heaven. He put off his sky-robes, 
spun from the woof of the rainbow, and took the form of a 
mortal, that he might not alarm those to whom he was 
sent. 



4 8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Now the story goes that through this wood came the three 
children of the Earl of Bridgewater, to take part in the festival 
at Ludlow Castle. The Lady Alice was a beautiful young 
girl, and as good as she was beautiful ; her two brothers were 
5 boys who had no fear. But the way through the wood was 
long, and the tangled vines and branches of the great trees 
confused them, so that they lost the path. Then it began to 
grow dark, and the Lady Alice grew hungry and very thirsty. 
The boys thought they might find wild berries for her in a 

10 near-by thicket, and leaving her for a moment upon a bank 
beneath the shelter of a group of pines, they plunged into 
the bushes. 

It grew darker, and soon they could not find their way 
back to their sister. After waiting long the Lady heard in 

15 the distance the noise of Comus and his followers, and thinking 
that they were peasants at a country dance, who would perhaps 
show her the way out of the wood, she followed the sound. 
Then she lost it, and to attract the attention either of them or 
of her brothers she sang a song. 

20 Comus heard her, and taking the form of a shepherd, he 
drew near. She told him that she had lost her brothers, 
and he replied in these flattering words : 

I saw them under a green mantling vine, 
That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 
25 Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots ; 

Their port was more than human, as they stood. 
I took it for a fairy vision. 

Comus told the Lady he would lead her to the spot, but 
instead he took her to his palace and offered her a drink 
30 of his magic liquor. 

Meanwhile the Attendant Spirit hastened to find the 
two brothers. He too took the form of a shepherd — the 
shepherd who was accustomed to tend their father's flocks, 



JOHN MltTON 49 

and whom they knew well. He told them that as he was 
sitting upon a bank of ivy, not long before, he had heard the 
roar and riot of Comus's crew and then the song of the lost 
Lady, and running to her aid he had found Comus already 
leading her away. 5 

"Come, let's on!" cried the elder of the brothers, and 
drawing his sword he started in search of Comus. 

But the Attendant Spirit held him back. "Good ven- 
turous youth," said he, "I love thy courage, but here thy 
sword can do thee little stead. He with his bare wand can 10 
unthread thy joints and crumble all thy sinews. But I 
have here a small unsightly root with darkish leaf and prickles 
on it, which has a greater power than that herb which Hermes 
once gave to wise Odysseus. It is called haemony, and it is 
proof against all enchantments. If you have this about you, 15 
you may boldly assault the necromancer's hall, rush on him, 
frreak his glass, and shed the liquor on the ground. But 
seize his wand. Though he and his crew make sign of battle, 
yet they will soon retire, if he shrinks back." 

The scene then changes to the palace of Comus in the 20 
heart of the woods. Soft music sounds throughout the 
halls. Tables are spread with all sorts of dainties. The 
Lady is seen seated in an enchanted chair, while Comus 
and his crew gather about her. Comus offers her the 
glass of magic liquor, but she will not touch it, and starts 25 
to rise. 

"Nay, Lady, sit," says Comus. "If I but wave this 
wand, your nerves are all chained up, and you a statue." 

"Do not boast," replies the Lady. "Thou canst not 
touch the freedom of my mind with all thy charms, though 30 
thou hast chained my body." 

"Why are you vexed, Lady?" asks Comus. "Why do 
you frown? See this liquor that flames and dances in its 
crystal glass, mixed with balm and fragrant sirups. It will 
cool your thirst and bring you joy." 35 



5 o EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

The Lady answers him : 

Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets, 
I would not taste thy treasonous offer. None 
But such as are good men can give good things ; 
5 And that which is not good is not delicious 

To a well-governed and wise appetite. 

Comus begins to feel the strength of the Lady's goodness 
and is afraid. But he makes one more effort and holds out 
the cup again. 

10 At this instant the two brothers rush in with their swords 
drawn. One of them dashes the glass out of the hand of 
Comus and breaks it into a thousand pieces. The crowd 
of Comus's followers fight for a time, but finally all turn 
and flee into the shadows of the wood. The last one has but 

15 just disappeared when in rushes the Attendant Spirit, crying : 

What ! Have you let the false enchanter 'scape ? 
O ye mistook ; ye should have snatched his wand, 
And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
20 We cannot free the Lady that sits here 

In stony fetters fixed and motionless. 

"But," he continues, "there is a gentle nymph not far 
from here who dwells in the smooth Severn stream. Sabrina 
is her name. Often at eve she visits the herds along the 

25 twilight meadows and guards them from the spells that the 
meddling elves throw about them, and for this the shepherds 
love her and at their festivals sing songs to her and throw 
sweet garland wreaths into her stream, of pansies, pinks and 
gaudy daffodils. She can unlock all charms and spells, and if 

30 she is called upon with a song, she will be swift to aid the Lady. 
I will call upon her thus and add the power of some beseeching 
verse." 






JOHN MILTON 51 

Then the Attendant Spirit calls upon the nymph and 
sings this song : 

Sabrina fair, 

Listen where thou art sitting 
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, s 

In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair ; 

Listen for dear honor's sake, 
Goddess of the silver lake, 

Listen and save 10 

When the song has ceased, Sabrina rises from the stream 
with her water-nymphs around her and sings : 

By the rushy-fringed bank, 

Where grows the willow and the osier dank, 

My sliding chariot stays, 15 

Thick set with agate and the azurn sheen 
Of turkis blue and emerald green 

That in the channel strays : 
Whilst from off the waters fleet 

Thus I set my printless feet 20 

O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 
That bends not as I tread. 
Gentle swain, at thy request 

I am here ! 
Spirit. Goddess dear, 25 

We implore thy powerful hand 

To undo the charmed band 
Of true virgin here distressed 
Through the force and through the wile 
Of unblessed enchanter vile. 30 

Sabrina. [To the Lady] Brightest Lady, look on me. 
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast 
Drops that from my fountain pure 
I have kept of precious cure ; 



52 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Thrice upon thy finger's tip, 
Thrice upon thy rubied lip : 
Now the spell hath lost his hold. 

At the end of this song Sabrina and her nymphs sink 
5 into the stream, and the Lady rises from her seat. 

The scene changes again, and we are in Ludlow Town, 
with Ludlow Castle in the background. Country youths 
and maidens come in, and there is dancing and merry-making 
in honor of the earl. In the midst of it all the Attendant 
10 Spirit, the Lady, and the Brothers enter, and the Spirit 
presents the three to their father and mother, telling of the 
trial through which they have passed and of their victory over 
the enchanter. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Name some things that were happening in England when Milton 
was born. 2. Tell or write the story of Milton's life : (a) when and 
where he was born ; (b) something about his father, his home, and his 
early studies ; (c) his school and university life ; (d) his life at Horton ; 
(e) his travels ; (/) his teaching, and his marriage ; (g) his work for the 
government, and his blindness; (h) his return to the writing of poetry, 
and his last days. 3. Tell why "Comus" was written. 4. Tell briefly 
in your own words the story of Comus. 5. Who was Circe? 

6. What herb did the Attendant Spirit give to the brothers to pro- 
tect them, and to what other herb did he compare it? 7. Memorize 
the speech of the Lady beginning with line 2, page 50. 8. Why did 
Comus fear the Lady? 9. What is meant by "Without his rod reversed 
and backward mutters of dissevering power we cannot free the Lady"? 
What are "stony fetters"? 10. Memorize the song "Sabrina fair," 
page 51. 11. Memorize Sabrina's reply. 12. What is meant by "The 
loose train of thy amber-dropping hair"; by "rushy-fringed," "osier 
dank," "azurn sheen," "turkis blue," "printless feet," "rubied lip"? 

The thought which Milton wishes to bring out in this play is that 
good is stronger than evil and can conquer it. 

Read about Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II in any good book 
of stories from English history. 



II. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

1672-1719 

Two hundred years ago, in London, the coffee-houses 
were the social centers where men met and heard the news 
and talked of books and politics and lighter things. " Will's 
Coffee-House" was a meeting place for poets and politicians, 
"The Grecian" was the resort of scholars, "St. James's" 
furnished the latest news from abroad. The coffee-houses 
and chocolate-houses were the clubs of that day. 

At one of these coffee-houses, in the early part of the 
eighteenth century, — some thirty or forty years after the 
death of Milton, — one might have been pretty sure of seeing, 
as the center of a group, a quiet, kindly gentleman with a 
grave smile about his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. It 
was Joseph Addison, the wit, statesman, poet, and essayist. 
With him might often have been seen Dick Steele, a bluff, 
kind-hearted soldier, who was a writer, too. Occasionally, if 
Dean Swift, the author of "Gulliver's Travels," were in Lon- 
don, he might also be found with them, or sometimes the 
poet Pope — but Pope was not a very sociable sort of person 
and did not like these meetings. Then there was Defoe, who 
was then writing "Robinson Crusoe." He might possibly 
have dropped in, when in town, but he was not popular with 
the literary people of his day, and kept much to himself. 

53 



54 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

Joseph Addison, the central figure of these coffee-house 
meetings, was the son of a clergyman and was born in 1672 
in the little village of Milston, in Wiltshire. He went to the 
Charterhouse School in London, where he first met Dick 
Steele, then a small boy of about his own age — short, round, 
black-eyed, bubbling over with fun and mischief, an orphan 
of Irish parentage who was being educated by an uncle. 

The two boys became fast friends. Joseph, though a 
few months the younger, was the leader. He was the stronger 
character, the better student, the more quiet and resourceful. 
Dick fairly worshiped Joseph, and Joseph loved Dick for his 
warm Irish heart. 

At fifteen the two boys went to Oxford, to the university. 
Young Addison soon became known as a writer of verses. 
He had expected to become a clergyman, like his father, but 
he became interested in politics ; and several statesmen, seeing 
his talent for political writing, offered him a pension of three 
hundred pounds, or about fifteen hundred dollars, a year, to 
enable him to travel on the Continent, study French, become 
acquainted with the politics of other European states, and 
then come back to England to aid their party — the Whigs — 
with his pen. 

While this was going on, Dick Steele, who was not overfond 
of study, saw one day a troop of soldiers in their red coats 
marching through town to the music of a fife and drum ; at 
this he dropped his college work, ran away, and joined the 
army. 

Addison traveled on the Continent four years and returned 
to take up his political work, but his friends were then out of 
power, and he found little to do. It was during the War of 
the Spanish Succession, when England, Holland, Prussia, and 
Austria were fighting against France and Bavaria. The part 
of the war which was carried over into America you know 
in your American histories as Queen Anne's War, or the 
second of the French and Indian wars. The English Duke 



56 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

of Marlborough and his allies had won a great victory at 
Blenheim, in Bavaria. 1 Addison at once wrote a poem cele- 
brating the duke as the greatest of warriors. The poem, 
which he named "The Campaign," was hailed throughout 
England as a great work. Queen Anne befriended the poet ; 
Marlborough's friends rewarded him ; he was given a govern- 
ment position with a good salary and plenty of leisure ; and 
his fortune seemed to be made. Not long afterwards he be- 
came a member of Parliament and later was sent to Ireland 
as Secretary of State. 

While Addison was in Ireland, Dick Steele came back from 
the wars. After trying his hand at a few plays and writing 
a book called "The Christian Hero," Steele conceived the 
idea of starting a paper which should contain news, gossip, 
stories of everyday life, and jokes on all sorts of people. He 
called it The Tatler. Addison was greatly interested in this 
project of his old schoolmate and offered to write for the 
paper. He was a better writer than Steele and he made The 
Tatler a great success. It was published three times a week 
and had only three or four small pages, but you must remember 
that this was before the days of real newspapers. There had 
been several little printed sheets of news published in London 
from time to time, and there was a paper that Defoe had edited 
in prison, 2 but, excepting Defoe's paper, their literary style 
was very poor. 

After The Tatler had been published about two years. 
Steele discontinued it and started another paper. This was 
published every morning instead of three times a week, and 
contained, instead of news, only the little familiar essays that 
had made The Tatler so famous. Addison agreed to help him 
in this, too, and the new paper was called The Spectator. 
Each issue was printed on a small sheet and delivered at the 
breakfast tables of its subscribers. It made fun of all that 

1 See Southey's poem, "After Blenheim," written about a century later. 

2 See The Young and Field Literary Readers. Hook Six. page 2 70. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 57 

was wrong and foolish in society and praised all that was good. 
It told odd stories about imaginary characters, as Sir Roger 
de Coverley, Will Wimble, and Will Honeycomb. To-day 
we call them character sketches, but they were really a kind 
of short story. Sir Roger de Coverley, simple-minded, kind- 
hearted, and somewhat pompous, was the most interesting 
of these characters. 

In the midst of his work on The Spectator Addison wrote 
a tragedy, "Cato," which, though very popular at the time, 
is now almost forgotten. Of his poetry, the best example is 
the famous hymn beginning : 

The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great Original proclaim. 

In 1 7 16, at the height of his fame, he married the Countess 
of Warwick, but the style and grandeur of her establishment 
did not please him, and I suspect he was glad to run away 
very often to his friends at " Will's" or at "The Grecian." 
He lived but three years after his marriage. 

All England mourned for Addison. A great funeral was 
held by night in Westminster Abbey, and there was a long 
and solemn procession, with torches, as they laid to rest the 
greatest literary man of his time and one of the greatest 
English essayists of all time. Thackeray has said of him : 

In the fields, in the town ; looking at the birds in the trees, at 
the children in the streets ; in the morning or in the moonlight, 
over his books in his own room, in a happy party at a country 
merrymaking or a town assembly, good will and peace to God's 
creatures and love and awe of Him who made them fill his pure 
heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most 
wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A life 
prosperous and beautiful, a calm death, an immense fame, and 
affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name. 



58 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

FROZEN WORDS 

[In this little essay from The Taller, dated 1710, Addison is making 
fun of some remarkable tales of travel written by Sir John Mandeviile 
and others. He pretends that this story is from an unpublished manu- 
script of Sir John's, and he wants to tell us slyly that there is no more 
truth in some of Sir John's published tales than there is in this.] 

There are no books which I more delight in than in travels, 
especially those that describe remote countries and give the 
writer an opportunity of showing his parts without incurring 
any danger of being examined or contradicted. Among all 

5 the authors of this kind, our renowned countryman Sir John 
Mandeviile has distinguished himself by the copiousness of 
his invention and greatness of his genius. The second to Sir 
John I take to have been Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, a person 
of infinite adventure and unbounded imagination. One reads 

10 the voyages of these two great wits with as much astonishment 
as the Travels of Ulysses in Homer, or of the Red Cross 
Knight in Spenser. All is enchanted ground and fairyland. 
I have got into my hands by great chance several manu- 
scripts of these two eminent authors, which are filled with 

15 greater wonders than any of those they have communicated 
to the public; and indeed, were they not, so well attested, 
would appear altogether improbable. I am apt to think the 
ingenious authors did not publish them with the rest of their 
works lest they should pass for fictions and fables. . . . 

20 The present paper I intend to fill with an extract of Sir 
John's Journal, in which that learned and worthy knight 
gives an account of the freezing and thawing of several short 
speeches which he made in the Territories of Nova Zembla. 
The relation put into modern language is as follows : 

25 We were separated by a storm in the latitude of 73, inso- 
much that only the ship which I was in, with a Dutch and a 
French vessel, got safe into a creek of Nova Zembla. We 
landed in order to refit our vessels and store ourselves with 



JOSEPH ADDISON 59 

provisions. The crew of each vessel made themselves a cabin 
of turf and wood at some distance from each other, to fence 
themselves against the inclemencies of the weather, which 
was severe beyond imagination. We soon observed that in 
talking to one another we lost several of our words and could 5 
not hear one another at above two yards distance, and that, 
too, when we sat very near the fire. After much perplexity 
I found that our words froze in the air before they could 
reach the ears of the person to whom they were spoken. I 
was soon confirmed in this conjecture when, upon the increase 10 
of the cold, the whole company grew dumb, or rather deaf ; 
for every man was sensible, as we afterwards found, that he 
spoke as well as ever ; but the sounds no sooner took air than 
they were condensed and lost. It was now a miserable 
spectacle to see us nodding and gaping at one another, every 15 
man talking, and no man heard. One might observe a seaman 
that could hail a ship at a league distance beckoning with 
his hands, straining his lungs, and tearing his throat, but 
all in vain. 

We continued here three weeks in this dismal plight. At 20 
length, upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. 
Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, 
which I afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants 
that broke above our heads and were often mixed with a gentle 
hissing, which I imputed to the letter S, that occurs so fre-25 
quently in the English tongue. I soon after felt a breeze of 
whispers rushing by my ear ; for those being of a soft and gentle 
substance, immediately liquefied in the warm wind that blew 
across our cabin. These were soon followed by syllables and 
short words, and at length by entire sentences, that melted 30 
sooner or later, as they were more or less congealed ; so that 
we now heard everything that had been spoken during the 
whole three weeks that we had been silent, if I may use that 
expression. It was now very early in the morning, and yet, to 
my surprise, I heard somebody say, "Sir John, it is midnight, 35 



6o EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

and time for the ship's crew to go to bed." This I knew to be 
the pilot's voice, and upon recollecting myself, I concluded 
that he had spoken these words to me some days before, 
though I could not hear them before the present thaw. My 
5 reader will easily imagine how the whole crew was amazed to 
hear every man talking and see no man opening his mouth. 
In the midst of this great surprise we were all in, we heard a 
volley of oaths and curses, lasting for a long while and uttered 
in a very hoarse voice, which I knew belonged to the boatswain, 

10 who was a very choleric fellow and had taken his opportunity 
of swearing at me when he thought I could not hear him ; for 
I had several times given him the strappado on that account, 
as I did not fail to repeat it for these his pious soliloquies, 
when I got him on shipboard. ... 

is When this confusion of voices was pretty well over, though 
I was afraid to offer at speaking, as fearing I should not be 
heard, I proposed a visit to the Dutch cabin, which lay about 
a mile further up into the country. My crew were extremely 
rejoiced to find they had again recovered their hearing, though 

20 every man uttered his voice with the same apprehensions that 
I had done. 

At about half a mile's distance from our cabin we heard 
the groanings of a bear, which at first startled us ; but upon 
inquiry we were informed by some of our company that he was 

25 dead and now lay in salt, having been killed upon that very 
spot about a fortnight before, in the time of the frost. Not far 
from the same place we were likewise entertained with some 
posthumous snarls and barkings of a fox. 

We at length arrived at the little Dutch settlement, and 

30 upon entering the room, found it filled with sighs that smelt 
of brandy, and several other unsavory sounds that were 
altogether inarticulate. My valet, who was an Irishman, 
fell into so great a rage at what he heard, that he drew his 
sword ; but not knowing where to lay the blame, he put it 

35 up again. We were stunned with these confused noises, but 



JOSEPH ADDISON 61 

did not hear a single word till about half an hour after ; which 
I ascribed to the harsh and obdurate sounds of that language, 
which wanted more time than ours to melt and become audible. 

After having here met with a very hearty welcome, we 
went to the cabin of the French, who, to make amends for 5 
their three weeks' silence, were talking and disputing with 
great rapidity and confusion. . . . 

I was here convinced of an error into which I had before 
fallen; for I fancied that for the freezing of the sound it 
was necessary for it to be wrapped up and, as it were, pre- 10 
served in breath ; but I found my mistake when I heard the 
sound of a kit playing a minuet over our heads. I asked the 
occasion of it ; upon which one of the company told me that 
it would play there above a week longer if the thaw continued. 
"For," says he, "rinding ourselves bereft of speech, we pre- 15 
vailed upon one of the company, who had this musical in- 
strument about him, to play to us from morning to night." 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Write or tell what you can of the lives of Addison and Steele. 
2. Describe The Tatler and The Spectator. 3. Tell something of the 
coffee-houses of Addison's day. 4. What other well-known authors 
lived at this time? 5. Why did Addison write this story? Why did 
he call it an unpublished manuscript of Sir John Mandeville ? 6. What 
do you know of Sir John Mandeville? 7. What is meant by giving a 
writer "an opportunity of showing his parts"! 8. Put into simpler 
words "copiousness of his invention," "a person of infinite adventure." 

9. Tell this story in your own words. 10. Where is NovaZembla? 
11. Express in other words: "inclemencies of the weather," "con- 
firmed in this conjecture," "choleric," "strappado," "pious soliloquies," 
"posthumous snarls," "inarticulate," "obdurate," "kit," "minuet." 

Other good stories by Addison may be selected from "The Adventures 
of a Shilling," "The Opera," "Sir Roger de Coverley in the Country," 
"Sir Roger at Church," "Sir Roger at the Assizes," and "The Vision of 
Mirza." Read also his hymn "The Spacious Firmament." 

Good stories by Steele are " Sir Roger in Love," " Sir Roger in London," 
"To London by Stage Coach," "Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey." 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

i 709-1 784 

While Addison was discussing books and politics with his 
friends in the London coffee-houses, a boy was born in Lich- 
field, in 1709, who a half century later was to take that great 
man's place as the literary authority of England. The boy 
grew up to be a very different sort of man from Addison, as 
you shall see. He was not so great a writer nor so agreeable 
a gentleman, but his influence, while it lasted, was even 
stronger than Addison's. 

This boy, Samuel Johnson, was the son of Michael Johnson, 
a poor bookseller of Lichfield. He was a large, awkward, 
overgrown boy, slow in his movements, and very nearsighted. 
When he was sixteen he left school for some reason and spent 
two years in his father's shop. We do not know just what 
he did there, but we do know that he read much in the old 
books which stood upon the shelves and in this way picked up 
a great deal of knowledge — odd, unusual, out-of-the-way 
knowledge, such as was not taught in the schools and such as 
few men knew. 

At this time of his life occurred an incident which Hawthorne 
has told most interestingly in his ''Biographical Stories." 
You must read it there in full, for I can give you, but an out- 
line of it. 

Sam's father, then an old man, used to go to the neighboring 
village of Uttoxeter on every market day and sell books at a 
stall in the public square. One hot summer morning, feeling 
quite ill, he asked Sam to go instead. Sam did not want to 

62 



64 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

go. He was shabbily dressed and he did not like to sell 
books, so he mumbled something under his breath, and when 
his father asked him what he said, he replied that he should 
stay at home. Old Mr. Johnson could not afford to lose the 
profits of the day's business, so he went himself, stood all day 
in the sun, and returned at night much the worse for his 
journey. It was not a pleasant day for Sam. He kept 
thinking all the time of that old, sick father, yet he was too 
obstinate to go to him. 

The memory of that day never left him. His father's 
death a few years later added to his remorse, and nearly fifty 
years afterwards, when he had become one of the most famous 
men in England, he went out one summer day from London 
to Lichfield, walked eighteen miles to Uttoxeter, and stood 
bareheaded in the market place in a driving rain, upon the 
spot where his father's bookstall had once been, hoping in 
that way to express his penitence. He stood there a long 
time, moving his lips as if in prayer, while the people looked 
at him in amazement and wondered what he was doing. He 
knew, and he went back to London feeling that he had in part 
at least paid the debt that he owed to his father's memory. 

But to go back to Johnson's youth. Old Michael Johnson, 
who loved books quite as much as his son loved them, was 
anxious to send Sam to college. Though earning barely 
enough to keep the family at home, he succeeded at last 
in getting help from a friend, and by making great sacrifices 
was enabled to send the boy to Oxford. 

Sam's teachers were surprised at the extent and variety 
of his knowledge. His memory was wonderful, it seemed 
no trouble for him to learn, and he needed only to read his 
lesson in order to master it. The students who really knew 
him respected him, those who looked only at the outside 
laughed and passed him by. He wore shabby clothes, his toes 
stuck out from the tips of his shoes, and his linen was far from 
clean. A well-meaning friend, thinking to help him, left a 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 65 

new pair of shoes at his door one morning, but Johnson was so 
angry that he threw them out of the window. 

He did not finish his course at Oxford. His old father 
earned a little less each year, and at last there was no money 
left to send to Sam ; so the young man got a position as 
undermaster in a grammar school. At twenty-five he married 
and set up a school of his own near Lichfield, but his teaching 
was not a success. He did not like it, and his pupils, for the 
most part, did not like him. One of them, David Garrick, 
afterwards a famous actor, set out one day with Johnson to 
walk to London, where they both determined to seek their 
fortunes. 

For nearly thirty years Johnson's life in London was a 
struggle against poverty and disappointment. He went to 
various publishers — or booksellers, as they were then called — 
and asked for work. One told him he would do better as a 
porter. Another spoke so insultingly that Johnson, who was 
quick-tempered, knocked him down with one of his own books. 
After a time he reported speeches for a newspaper ; he wrote a 
tragedy, which Garrick acted, but it was not successful ; he 
tried his hand at this kind of writing and at that, often not 
earning enough to pay for his dinner, and sometimes walking 
the street all night to keep from freezing. Yet he kept on, 
for he knew that he had brains and that he would sometime 
find a chance to show them. 

The chance came when one of the booksellers employed 
him to write a dictionary. There had never before been such 
a thing as an English dictionary, and Johnson made his with 
so much care and showed so much learning that it at once 
attracted notice. He spent seven years writing it. Mean- 
while he started a paper called The Rambler, somewhat after 
the style of The Spectator, but it was too heavy to be very 
popular. In all his writing he was rather too fond of big words. 
Goldsmith once said that if he wrote about little fishes he would 
be sure to make them talk like whales. 



66 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

As soon as Johnson began to earn something, he sent for his 
wife, and the two lived together in London until her death. 
Soon afterwards his mother died. He was at that time with- 
out money, and to pay his mother's funeral expenses he 
wrote a story called "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." It 
took him a week to write it, and it brought him a hundred 
pounds. 

In 1762 King George III, seeing that Johnson had become 
one of the leading scholars of his realm, gave him a pension 
of three hundred pounds a year. With this the long right 
against poverty was over. Two years later, with Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, the famous portrait painter, Johnson formed a 
club, which included also Goldsmith, Garrick, Gibbon the 
historian, Burke the orator, and Boswell a Scotch lawyer 
who wrote the best biography of Johnson that we have. 
This club ruled the literary opinions of England, and Johnson 
ruled the club. He loved to talk, and he talked well. So it 
came about that he did most of the talking. It was at this 
time that he was given a degree by the University of Oxford 
and was known as Dr. Johnson. When about sixty-five he 
made a journey to the Hebrides and wrote a book about it. 
He also wrote "The Lives of the Poets," a series of biog- 
raphies, which is generally considered his best work. 

Though Dr. Johnson was often rude, he was singularly 
kind-hearted. During his later years he supported in his 
house five unfortunate people whom he had picked up from 
the streets at different times. They were always quarreling 
among themselves and always abusing him, but he never had 
the heart to turn them out. He had enemies, because he 
spoke his mind freely about the shallow and dishonest people 
who made up a large part of polite society in his day. Yet 
he was respected, and a little feared, for this very plain 
speaking. On the whole, we like to think of him as very 
human, full of roughnesses, but honest and good-hearted. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 67 

CAPTURED BY ARABS 

[Dr. Johnson's story "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia" tells how a 
prince of that name escaped with his sister Nekayah from the Happy 
Valley, where they were being educated, and, accompanied by the poet 
Imlac and the lady Pekuah, an attendant or favorite of the princess, 
went out into the world to seek for true happiness. They did not find 
it, and at length returned to the valley they had left. One of their 
adventures, which took place while they were visiting the pyramids of 
Egypt, is told in the following selection. The party is supposed to be 
in Cairo, and has just decided to go to the Pyramids.] 

The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next 
day. They laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to 
stay among the Pyramids till their curiosity was fully satis- 
fied. They traveled gently, turned aside to everything 
remarkable, stopped from time to time and conversed with 5 
the inhabitants, and observed the various appearances of 
towns ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature. 

When they came to the great pyramid, they were astonished 
at the extent of the base and the height of the top. They 
measured all its dimensions and pitched their tents at its 10 
foot. Next day they prepared to enter its interior apart- 
ments, and having hired the common guides, climbed up to 
the first passage, when the favorite of the princess, looking 
into the cavity, stepped back and trembled. 

"Pekuah," said the princess, "of what art thou afraid?" 15 

"Of the narrow entrance," answered the lady, "and of the 
dreadful gloom." 

"My dear Pekuah," said the princess, "I will always 
go before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember 
that you are the companion of the princess of Abyssinia." 20 

"If the princess is pleased that her servant should die," 
returned the lady, "let her command some death less dreadful 
than inclosure in this horrid cavern. You know I dare not 



68 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

disobey you ; I must go if you command me, but if I once 
enter I never shall come back." 

The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expos- 
tulation or reproof, and embracing her, told her that she 
5 should stay in the tent. Pekuah was not yet satisfied, but 
entreated the princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose as 
that of entering the recesses of the pyramid. 

"Though I cannot teach courage," said Nekayah, "I must 
not learn cowardice, nor leave at last undone what I came 

10 hither only to do." 

Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the 
pyramid ; they passed through the galleries, surveyed the 
vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the 
body of the founder is supposed to have been reposited. 

15 Then they returned through the cavity at which they had en- 
tered. But when they came to their train, they found 
every one silent and dejected ; the men discovered shame and 
fear in their countenances, and the women were weeping in 
their tents. 

20 "You had scarcely entered into the pyramid," said one 
of the attendants, "when a troop of Arabs rushed upon us. 
We were too few to resist them and too slow to escape. They 
were about to search the tents, set us on our camels, and 
drive us along before them, when the approach of some 

25 Turkish horsemen put them to flight ; but they seized the 
lady Pekuah, with her two maids, and carried them away. 
The Turks are now pursuing them, but I fear they will not 
be able to overtake them." 

In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able 

30 to reach the enemy. There was nothing to be hoped from 
longer stay. They returned to Cairo, repenting of their curios- 
ity, censuring the negligence of the government, lamenting 
their own rashness, which had neglected to procure a guard, 
and resolving to do something for the recovery of Pekuah, 

35 though none could find anything proper to be done. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 69 

Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memorial 
of the wrong which he had suffered and a petition for redress. 
The Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, but did not 
attempt to catch them, nor indeed could any account or 
description be given by which he might direct the pursuit. 5 

The princess would not suffer any means, however im- 
probable, to be left untried. While she was doing some- 
thing she kept her hope alive. As one expedient failed, 
another was suggested ; when one messenger returned un- 
successful, another was dispatched to a different quarter. In 10 
seven months one of the messengers returned, after many 
unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an 
account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief who 
possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The 
Arab was willing to restore her with her two attendants for 15 
two hundred ounces of gold. 

The princess was in ecstasies when she heard that her favorite 
was alive and might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not 
think of delaying for a moment Pekuah's happiness or her 
own, but entreated her brother to send back the messenger 20 
with the sum. required. 

Imlac, after some deliberation, directed the messenger to 
propose that Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen 
to the monastery of St. Antony, which is situated in the 
deserts of Upper Egypt, where she should be met by the same 25 
number, and her ransom should be paid. 

That no time might be lost, they immediately began 
their journey to the monastery, and when they arrived, Imlac 
went forward with the former messenger to the Arab's fortress. 
Rasselas was desirous to go with them, but neither his sister 30 
nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, in a few days, brought 
Pekuah with her maids by easy journeys to the place ap- 
pointed, where receiving the stipulated price, he restored her, 
with great respect, to liberty and her friends. The princess 
and her favorite embraced each other and went out together 35 



70 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

to exchange professions of kindness and gratitude. After a 
few hours they returned and the prince required of Pekuah 
the history of her adventures. 

"At what time and in what manner I was forced away," 

5 said Pekuah, "your servants have told you. The suddenness 
of the event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather 
stupefied. My confusion was increased by the speed and 
tumult of our flight, while we were followed by the Turks, 
who, as it seemed, soon despaired to overtake us or were 

10 afraid of those whom they made a show of menacing. 

"When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger, they 
slackened their course. After some time we stopped near 
a spring shaded with trees in a pleasant meadow, where 
we were set upon the ground and offered such refreshments as 

15 our masters were partaking. I was suffered to sit with my 
maids apart from the rest, and none attempted to comfort or 
insult us. Here I first began to feel the full weight of my 
misery. The girls sat weeping in silence and from time to 
time looked on me for succor. I knew not to what condition 

20 we were doomed, but I kissed my maids and endeavored to 
pacify them by remarking that we were yet treated with 
decency and that, since we were now carried beyond pursuit, 
there was no danger of violence to our lives. 

"When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids 

25 clung round me and refused to be parted. We traveled the 
remaining part of the day through an unfrequented and path- 
less country and came by moonlight to the side of a hill 
where the rest of the troop was stationed. Their tents were 
pitched and their fires kindled, and our chief was welcomed 

30 as a man much beloved by his dependents. 

"We were received into a large tent, where we found 
women who had attended their husbands in the expedition. 
They set before us the supper which they had provided, and 
I ate rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any 

35 appetite of my own. When the meat was taken away, they 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 71 

spread the carpets for repose. I observed that the women 
were apparently struck with the splendor of my clothes, and 
one of them timorously laid her hand upon the embroidery. 
She then went out and in a short time came back with another 
woman, who seemed to be of higher rank and greater authority. 5 
She did at her entrance the usual act of reverence, and taking 
me by the hand, placed me in a smaller tent, spread with 
finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my maids. 

"In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief 
of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and 10 
he bowed with great respect. 

'"Illustrious lady,' said he, 'my fortune is better than I 
had presumed to hope. I am told by my women that I have 
a princess in my camp.' 

"'Sir,' answered I, 'your women have deceived themselves 15 
and you. I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger, who 
intended soon to have left this country.' 

"'Whoever or whencesoever you are,' returned the Arab, 
'your dress and that of your servants show your rank to be 
high and your wealth to be great. The purpose of my incur- 20 
sions is to increase my riches, or more properly, to gather 
tribute. Do not be disconsolate. I will fix your ransom, 
give a passport to your messenger, and perform my stipulation 
with nice punctuality.' 

"We traveled onward by short journeys. On the fourth 25 
day the chief told me that my ransom must be two hundred 
ounces of gold; which I not only promised him, but told 
him that I would add fifty more if I and my maids were honor- 
ably treated. 

"I never knew the power of gold before. From that time 30 
I was the leader of the troop. The march of every day was 
longer or shorter as I commanded, and the tents were pitched 
where I chose to rest. At last we came to the dwelling of our 
chief, a strong and spacious house, in an island of the Nile. 
'Lady,' said the Arab, 'you shall rest after your journey a few 35 



72 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

weeks in this place, where you are to consider yourself as 
sovereign. My occupation is war ; I have therefore chosen 
this obscure residence, from which I can issue unexpected and 
to which I can retire unpursued. You may now repose in 

5 security ; here are few pleasures but here is no danger.' 

" He still delayed to send for my ransom and would perhaps 
never have determined had not your agent found his way to 
him. The gold which he would not fetch he could not reject 
when it was offered." 

10 Nekayah, having heard her favorite's relation, rose and 
embraced her, and Rasselas. gave her a hundred ounces of 
gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were 
promised. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Tell the story of Johnson's life. For what was he noted ? 2. Why 
was the story of Rasselas written? What is it about ? 3. Tell in your 
own words the story of the capture and return of Pekuah. 4. What are 
the pyramids of Egypt? 5. What actions of Pekuah show you some- 
thing of her character, and how would you describe her? Compare 
her with the princess. 6. What is meant by a fear "too strong for ex- 
postulation or reproof"? (On page 68, line 16, "train" is used as 
company or retinue. In line 17 "discovered" is used in the sense of 
showed) 7. Who was the Bassa, and what is a "memorial"? 

8. Why was so great caution taken to pay the ransom and receive the 
captive at a distant monastery? 9. Do you think the people in this 
story talk naturally? What should you say of Dr. Johnson's literary 
style ? What did Goldsmith say about it ? 

The story of Rasselas is so full of philosophical discussion that you 
will hardly care to read it all. The first five chapters, describing the 
Happy Valley, and the thirteenth to the fifteenth chapters, in which 
Rasselas escapes, are the most interesting. 

Additional reading: Hawthorne's "Samuel Johnson" in "Bio- 
graphical Stories." 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

1728-1774 

If Dr. Johnson was the chief literary figure of the middle 
eighteenth century in England, Oliver Goldsmith was one 
of its greatest writers. The two men were much together, 
and Johnson, who was nearly twenty years the older, helped 
"Goldy," as he affectionately called him, over many a hard 
place, making his genius known. 

Goldsmith was born in the little village of Pallas, in County 
Longford, Ireland, in 1728. He was the son of a country 
clergyman and one of a family of eight children. When 
he was but two years old the family moved to another Irish 
village named Lissoy, where the good vicar found a better 
parish and a farm, and where the children grew up. 

Oliver first went to school to an old lady in Lissoy, who 
declared that he was a stupid, worthless child and that he 
would never be able to learn anything. Perhaps this was 
because he did not love the lady overmuch and because he 
did not try. His next teacher was an old soldier, " Paddy" 
Byrne, who instead of teaching him to read and figure, told 
stories of the wars and tales of ghosts, fairies, and pirates. 
This suited Oliver much better. Paddy Byrne also wrote 
poetry now and then, and the boy was so charmed by it that 
at the age of eight he too began to compose verses, which he 
used to write on slips of paper and drop into the fire. Perhaps 
that was a good place for them. 

About this time Noll, as the boy was called for short, 
had a severe attack of smallpox, which nearly ended his life 
and which left his face sadly marred. He was never a 

73 



74 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

handsome boy, and this did not improve his looks. He was 
undersized, dark-skinned, with a bulging forehead, a receding 
chin, and spindle legs. He was shy, but active and full of 
fun ; good-hearted, but careless. 

After leaving Paddy Byrne, Noll was sent to several dif- 
ferent schools in neighboring villages and at seventeen went 
to Trinity College, Dublin. A story is told of how, once 
returning home at the end of a term, he was overtaken by 
darkness and wished to find an inn where he might spend the 
night. He asked a stranger to direct him to the best house 
in the neighborhood, and the stranger, thinking to have a 
joke upon the young man, directed him to the home of Squire 
Featherstone, one of the richest of the country gentlemen in 
all those parts. 

Noll found the house, knocked loudly at the door, and 
demanded supper and a good bed. The squire saw the 
boy's mistake, but carried out the joke and did not set him 
right until the next morning, when the guest offered to pay 
the bill. Years afterwards Goldsmith used this incident in 
his comedy "She Stoops to Conquer." 

Goldsmith entered Trinity College as a sizar, that is, 
a scholar who pays part of his expenses by waiting upon 
tables and other work. He earned something, too, by writing 
street ballads at five shillings apiece, and was fond of going 
out at night to hear them sung. A fellow student at Trinity 
was Edmund Burke, the famous orator, who later became 
one of his best friends. 

Goldsmith's father was now dead, but his uncle and several 
good friends helped the young man to finish his education. 
His family wanted him to be a clergyman, and he went to the 
bishop to be examined, but the bishop would not have him ; 
some say because he could not pass the examination, others 
because he was thought to be too wild, and still others be- 
cause he dressed too gayly, for he went up to the examina- 
tion wearing a pair of bright scarlet breeches. 



76 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

He tried teaching but was not successful. Then his uncle 
gave him money and sent him to London to study law. But 
Goldsmith never could keep money; he got no farther than 
Dublin before it was gone, and he came back home without 
a penny. 

A little later his uncle decided to try once more and ac- 
cordingly sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine. Gold- 
smith studied pretty well for about a year and a half, and 
then set out on a journey through Europe. When his money 
gave out, he tramped, playing his flute in the villages, as he 
went, and thus earning a supper and a lodging. 

He spent a year in this way, traveling as far as Italy. 
Then he returned to London, realizing that he must begin 
to earn a living. What should he do in London? He tried 
practicing medicine, but could not earn enough to buy his 
food ; he worked for an apothecary ; he wrote for Newbery 
the bookseller a number of children's stories, one of which 
is supposed to have been the tale of " Little Goody Two- 
Shoes." It was when he began to write, that he showed 
what he could really do. Dr. Johnson heard of him and be- 
came interested in him ; and that was enough to bring him 
into public notice. 

But Goldsmith was still careless and generally in debt. 
When he had money he shared it with others, and it was 
gone. Once, when he could not pay his landlady, she had 
him arrested. He sent for Dr. Johnson. The doctor asked 
him if he had written no book or story that he could sell. 
Goldsmith replied that he had an unpublished story, "The 
Vicar of Wakefield." Johnson read it, said it was good, 
took it out to a bookseller, and sold it for sixty pounds, which 
he brought to Goldsmith and thus enabled him to free him- 
self. "The Vicar of Wakefield" proved to be the greatest 
of Goldsmith's works and was one of the first great English 
novels. But the bookseller who bought it thought so little 
of it that he kept it in a drawer two years before publishing it. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 77 

Goldsmith then wrote a poem called "The Traveler," 
describing some of the scenes through which he had passed 
upon his journeys; and another, "The Deserted Village, " 
picturing his old home at Lissoy, his father, and Paddy 
Byrne the schoolmaster. He wrote two successful plays, 
"The Good-Natured Man" and "She Stoops to Conquer," 
the latter based upon the incident of his night at Squire 
Featherstone's, of which I have already told you. 

But Goldsmith's success did him little good. He was 
always in trouble, and he died at forty-five, very unhappy 
because of his debts and of the time that he had wasted. 
He was a man of genius and might have made his fame much 
greater than it is. But he wrote one novel, one poem, and 
one play, that will not be forgotten. They are "The, Vicar 
of Wakefield," "The Deserted Village," and "She Stoops 
to Conquer." 

MOSES AT THE FAIR 

[This selection is from "The Vicar of Wakefield."] 

As we were now to hold up our heads a little higher in 
the world, it would be proper to sell the colt at a neigh- 
boring fair and buy us a horse that could carry single or 
double upon an occasion and make a pretty appearance at 
church or upon a visit. ... 5 

As the fair happened on the following day, I had inten- 
tions of going myself, but my wife persuaded me I had a cold, 
and nothing could prevail upon her to permit me from home. 

"No, my dear," said she, "our son Moses is a discreet boy 
and can buy and sell to very good advantage ; you know all IO 
our great bargains are of his purchasing. He always stands out 
and higgles and actually tires them till he gets a bargain." 

As I had some opinion of my son's prudence, I was willing 
enough to intrust him with this commission ; and the next 
morning I perceived his sisters busy in fitting out Moses 15 



78 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

for the fair, trimming his hair, brushing his buckles, and cock- 
ing his hat with pins. The business of the toilet being over, 
we had at last the satisfaction of seeing him mounted upon the 
colt, with a deal box before him to bring home groceries in. 
5 He had on a coat made of that cloth they call thunder and 
lightning, which, though grown too short, was much too good 
to be thrown away. His waistcoat was of gosling green, and 
his sisters had tied his hair with a broad black ribbon. We all 
followed him several paces from the door, bawling after him, 
10 " Good luck ! good luck ! " till we could see him no longer. 

I wondered what could keep our son so long at the fair, 
as it was now almost nightfall. 

"Never mind our son," cried my wife, " depend upon 

it he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see 

15 him sell his hen of a rainy day. I have seen him buy such 

bargains as would amaze one. But as I live, yonder comes 

Moses, without a horse, and the box at his back ! " 

As she spoke, Moses came slowly on foot, and sweating 
under the deal box, which he had strapped round his shoulders 
20 like a peddler. 

"Welcome, welcome, Moses! well, my boy, what have 
you brought us from the fair?" 

"I have brought you myself," cried Moses, with a sly 
look, and resting the box on the dresser. 
25 "Ah, Moses!" cried my wife, "that we know, but where 
is the horse?" 

"I have sold him," cried Moses, "for three pounds five 
shillings and twopence." 

"Well done, my good boy!" returned she. "I knew you 
30 would touch them off. Between ourselves, three pounds 
five shillings and twopence is no bad day's work. Come, 
let us have it then." 

"I have brought back no money," cried Moses, again. 
"I have laid it all out in a bargain, and here it is," pulling 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 79 

out a bundle from his breast. "Here they are, a gross of 
green spectacles, with silver rims and shagreen cases." 

"A gross of green spectacles!" repeated my wife, in a 
faint voice. "And you have parted with the colt and brought 
us back nothing but a gross of paltry green spectacles!" 5 

"Dear mother," cried the boy, "why won't you listen to 
reason? I had them a dead bargain, or I should not have 
bought them. The silver rims alone will sell for double the 
money." 

"A fig for the silver rims!" cried my wife in a passion. 10 
"I dare say they won't sell for above half the money at 
the rate of broken silver, five shillings an ounce." 

"You need be under no uneasiness," cried I, "about sell- 
ing the rims ; they are not worth sixpence, for I perceive 
they are only copper varnished over." 15 

"What ! " cried my wife, "not silver ! the rims not silver ! " 

"No," cried I, "no more silver than your saucepan." 

"And so," returned she, "we have parted with the colt 
and have only got a gross of green spectacles with copper 
rims and shagreen cases ! The blockhead has been imposed 20 
upon and should have known his company better." 

"There, my dear," cried I, "you are wrong. He should 
not have known them at all." 

"The idiot!" returned she, "to bring me such stuff! If 
I had them I would throw them into the fire." 25 

"There again you are wrong, my dear," cried I; "for 
though they be copper, we will keep them by us, as copper 
spectacles, you know, are better than nothing." 

By this time the unfortunate Moses was undeceived. 
He now saw that he had, indeed, been imposed upon by 30 
a prowling sharper, who, observing his figure, had marked 
him for an easy prey. I therefore asked the circumstances 
of his deception. He sold the horse, it seems, and walked the 
fair in search of another. A reverend-looking man brought 
him to a tent, under pretence of having one to sell. 35 



80 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

"Here," continued Moses, "we met another man, very 
well dressed, who desired to borrow twenty pounds upon 
these, saying that he wanted money and would dispose of 
them for a third of the value. The first gentleman, who 
5 pretended to be my friend, whispered me to buy them and 
cautioned me not to let so good an offer pass. I sent for Mr. 
Flamborough, and they talked him up as finely as they did 
me, and so at last we were persuaded to buy the two gross 
between us." 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give a sketch of Goldsmith's life. Name three or more of his 
works. 2. Explain "hold up our heads a little higher in the world," 
"carry single or double upon an occasion." 3. What reason, besides 
the vicar's cold, might have led his wife to oppose his going himself to 
sell the colt ? 4. Explain " stands out and higgles," " deal box," " thunder 
and lightning," "waistcoat," "gosling green." 5. What do you think is 
meant by the expression "we'll never see him sell his hen of a rainy 
day" ? (How does a hen look on a rainy day?) 

6. How many is a "gross" ? Give definitions of "shagreen," "paltry," 
"varnished over" (the meaning here is to cover with anything that gives 
a fair appearance), "prowling sharper," "easy prey," "reverend-looking." 
7. After reading this story describe the character of Moses, of the vicar's 
wife, of the vicar. 8. Do you think the vicar would have made a bet- 
ter bargain than Moses? The fourteenth chapter of "The Vicar of 
Wakefield" will tell you what sort of bargain he did make. 



SCENES FROM "THE DESERTED VILLAGE" 

10 Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain ; 

Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, 
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, 
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed : 
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 

15 Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 

How often have I loitered o'er thy green, 
Where humble happiness endeared each scene ! 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 81 

How often have I paused on every charm, 

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 

The decent church that topt the neighboring hill, 

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade s 

For talking age and whispering lover made ! 

Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, 
The mingling notes came softened from below ; 10 

The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 
The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, *5 

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; — 
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade 
And filled each pause the nightingale had made. 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 

And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 20 

There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 

The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 

A man he was to all the country dear, 

And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 

Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 25 

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place ; 

Unpracticed he to fawn or seek for power 

By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 

Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 

More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 30 

His house was known to all the vagrant train ; 

He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain ; 



82 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast ; 
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud. 
Claimed kindred there and had his claims allowed ; 
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 
Sate by the fire and talked the night away, 
Wept o'er his wounds or, tales of sorrow done, 
Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won. 



At church with meek and unaffected grace 
10 His looks adorned the venerable place ; 

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. 
The service past, around the pious man, 
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 
15 Even children followed with endearing wile 

And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile. 
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed, 
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed ; 
To them his heart, his love, his gfiefs were given, 
20 But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, 
Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

25 Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 

With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 
The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 

30 I knew him well, and every truant knew : 

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 83 

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 

Full well the busy whisper circling round 

Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. 

Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, s 

The love he bore to learning was in fault ; 

The village all declared how much he knew : 

'T was certain he could write, and cipher too ; 

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 

And even the story ran that he could gauge ; 10 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 

For, even tho' vanquished, he could argue still ; 

While words of learned length and thundering sound 

Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; 

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 15 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Of what village was Goldsmith thinking when he wrote this poem? 
2. Explain "laboring swain," "decent church," "talking age," "re- 
sponsive as the milkmaid sung," "the loud laugh that spoke the vacant 
mind." 3. What does "passing rich with forty pounds a year" tell of 
the village and people? 4. Explain lines 27-28, 30, 31-32, page 81. 
5. Explain lines 4, 8, page 82. 6. Describe the character of the preacher 
from the incidents here told. 7. Explain the use of the word "adorned " 
in line 10, page 82. 

8. Explain the figure of speech in lines 21-24, page 82. 9. Explain 
" With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,' ' line 26, page 82. 10. Explain 
lines 31-32, page 82. n. Explain lines 5-6, 9-10, page 83. 12. What 
does the description of the schoolmaster tell you of the state of educa- 
tion in Lissoy? 13. Select the lines and expressions that you like best, 
and memorize them. 



ROBERT BURNS 

1759-1796 

A few miles out from the town of Ayr, on the west coast 
of Scotland, is the little one-story cottage in which Robert 
Burns, the greatest of Scotch poets, was born. It is now 
kept nearly as it was in his time, and is visited by thousands 
of travelers. The cottage is of rough stone and clay, with a 
roof of straw. It was built by Burns's father, a hard-working 
farmer who was very poor, but kind to his children and 
anxious to give them an education. 

There were seven children in the family. Robbie, the 
poet, was the oldest. He was born in 1759. When he 
was six years old, his father sent him to school to a neighbor- 
ing village, but his regular schooling was for only three years. 
At the age of nine he had to go home and help on the farm, 
doing such work as a boy could do. The family had moved 
to another farm while he was at school, and after several 
years they moved again. The land was poor, and it was 
hard to earn a living from it. But in the winter evenings 
and often during the noon hour in summer, as they were 
resting from their work, the father taught the children what 
he knew and read to them. The mother and an old servant 
told them fairy stories and sang them old Scotch songs. 

So they learned something, after all, and afterwards 
Robert went to school again for a few weeks at a time and 
studied a little French and Latin and surveying. At thirteen 
he was doing a man's work on the farm and at sixteen he 
was his father's chief helper. But he loved to read, and he 
carried a book of English songs or a volume of Shakespeare 

84 



86 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

in his pocket, reading it as he drove the cart to town, or walked 
to the field, or ate his supper. In his noble poem "The 
Cotter's Saturday Night" he gives us a picture of the family 
at the close of the week, sitting in the evening by the fireside. 

When Burns was twenty-three, his father died. The 
family then took another farm, and the young man worked 
harder than ever. But he saw poetry in everything, and he 
wrote verses like those that he had read in his book of English 
songs, and he repeated to himself the old Scotch songs that 
he had heard, and tried to make them better, and did make 
them better — so much better that the people listened to 
them with delight and felt that they were something new. 
Much of this he did while he was plowing. Once, in the 
autumn, his plow turned up the nest of a field mouse, and 
he wrote a poem about it, telling how sad it made him feel 
to think of the little house all ruined, and winter coming on. 
At another time he plowed up a daisy and wrote a poem about 
that. There was nothing so small or so simple that it did 
not interest him. 

About this time Burns became discouraged and thought 
he would go to the West Indies. In order to get enough 
money to pay for his passage he had some of his poems printed. 
They not only brought him enough money for the passage, 
but they awakened such interest among literary people that 
he decided not to go to the West Indies, after all, but to go 
instead to Edinburgh. There he was invited to dinners and 
to parties and was made much of. Scott, then a boy of fifteen, 
saw him and described him afterwards as a noble-looking 
man with the finest eyes he had ever seen. 

Some of the friends that Burns made in Edinburgh ob- 
tained for him a position as tax collector on the border be- 
tween Scotland and England. It was his business to see 
that certain things were not brought over the border until 
the taxes or duties had been paid upon them and that certain 
other things were not brought over at all. To do this he had 



ROBERT BURNS 87 

to ride from town to town on horseback; often he rode at 
night, through the woods and over the mountains, in the 
rain or snow, and as he rode he thought out poems. But 
this sort of life was not good for him. He had fallen in with 
bad companions years before and had spent too much time 
at alehouses. Afterwards he had partly overcome the habit, 
but now, after a cold ride, he found the taproom of the tavern 
too pleasant a place ; he ruined his health, and when only 
thirty-seven he died — in a poor little house in Dumfries, 
where he had been living with his faithful wife and his young 
children. 

MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS 

[This is the song of a Scotch Highlander who has been obliged to leave 
his home and travel in the South. What you will notice particularly in 
the song is the music of it. It seems to roll and flow along like one of 
the Highland rivers.] 

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, 
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, 
Chasing the wild deer and following the roe, 
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. 
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, 
The birthplace of valor, the country of worth ; 
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, 
The hills of the Highlands forever I love. 

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow, 
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below, 
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, 
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. 
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, 
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, 
Chasing the wild deer and following the roe, 
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. 



88 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of Burns's life. 2. Who is supposed to be singing 
this song? 3. Where are the Highlands of Scotland? 4. What feeling is 
expressed in the sentence "My heart's in the Highlands"? 5. Explain 
"birthplace of valor," "country of worth," "straths," "wild-hanging 
woods," "torrents." 

JOHN ANDERSON MY JO 

[This is supposed to be the song of an old Scotch peasant woman to 
her husband. Notice how simple and straightforward it is, and how 
much feeling it expresses.] 

John Anderson my jo, 1 John, 

When we were first acquent, 2 
Your locks were like the raven, 

Your bonie 3 brow was brent ; 4 
5 But now your brow is beld, 5 John, 

Your locks are like the snaw ; 6 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 7 

John Anderson my jo. 

John Anderson my jo, John, 
IO We clamb the hill thegither ; 8 

And monie a canty 9 day, John, 

We've had wi' ane anither : 
Now we maun 10 totter down, John, 
And hand in hand we'll go 
i S And sleep thegither at the foot, 

John Anderson my jo. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Explain "Your locks were like the raven," "We clamb the hill 
thegither," "Now we maun totter down," "sleep thegither at the foot." 
2. Is the feeling in the poem one of contentment or of sorrow? What 
makes it beautiful ? 

1 my dear 3 handsome 5 bald 7 head ■ happy 

' 2 acquainted 4 smooth 8 snow 8 together 10 must 



ROBERT BURNS 89 

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT 

Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hings x his head, an' a' 2 that? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that ! 

For a' that, an' a' that, 5 

Our toils obscure, an' a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
The man's the gowd 3 for a' that. 

What tho' on hamely 4 fare we dine, 

Wear hodden-gray, 5 an' a' that ; 10 

Gie 6 fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 
A man's a man for a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

Their tinsel show, an' a' that ; 
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, J S 

Is king o' men for a' that. 

Ye see yon birkie, 7 ca'd a lord, 

Wha 8 struts, an' stares, an' a' that ; 
Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 

He's but a coof 9 for a' that. 20 

For a' that, an' a' that, 

His riband, star, an' a' that, 
The man o' independent mind, 
He looks and laughs at a' that. 

A prince can mak a belted knight, 2 5 

A marquis, duke, an' a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon 10 his might, 

Guid faith he mauna fa' ll that ! 



1 hangs 


4 homely 


7 a conceited fellow 


10 above 


2 all 


5 coarse gray cloth 


8 who 


11 must not try 


3 gold 


6 give 


9 dunce 





go EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE 

For a' that, an' a' that, 
Their dignities, an' a' that, 

The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth 
Are higher rank than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may, 

As come it will for a' that, 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree, 1 an' a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

It's coming yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 
Shall brothers be for a' that. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Explain the first two lines. (Is there any one that hangs his 
head because of honest poverty?) 2. Explain lines 7-8. (A man's 
rank in life is like the stamp upon the coin. It does not change the 
metal that is in it.) 3. Explain u tinsel show." 4. Explain " His riband, 
star, an' a' that." (They are signs of an order of knighthood.) 
5. Explain "A prince can mak a belted knight," etc. What can a prince 
not make? 6. There is a line from Pope: "An honest man's the 
noblest work of God." Find a sentence in this poem that means the 
same thing. 

1 prize 



III. THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE 
OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURIES 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

1770-1850 

One of the loveliest places in England is the Lake Country 
in the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland near the 
Scottish border. If you will look at a map of that country, 
you will see a half dozen or more little lakes lying among the 
mountains and emptying through small rivers into the Irish 
Sea. It is just such a country as a poet ought to be born in 
and grow up in, and luckily it was the home of Wordsworth, 
one of the greatest of English nature poets. Two other poets, 
Coleridge and Southey, also lived there. The three together, 
known as the Lake Poets, made the region so famous that 
travelers from all over the world now go to visit it and try 
to find the places where the poets lived and the scenes which 
they described. 

In 1770, a few years before the breaking out of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, Wordsworth was born in the village of Cocker- 
mouth, beside a beautiful little river called the Derwent. 
The house where he lived is still standing — a square, two- 
storied, solid-looking sort of house, set away back from the 
street, with a garden behind it that stretches down to the 
river. There were five children in the Wordsworth family. 
William was next to the oldest, and Dorothy, the only sister, 

91 



92 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

was next to William. The children used to spend long summer 
afternoons playing together in the garden or beside the river 
or running to the rose hedge to peek into the sparrow's nest 
or chasing butterflies around the flower beds or doing a hun- 
dred other things that children like to do. From the garden 
they could see, up the river, the towers of old Cockermouth 
Castle. There William spent many an hour climbing about 
the ruined walls or lying on the grass and looking at the hills 
and meadows across the stream and at the clouds floating 
in the sky. 

And there was the mill race, too, where he used to go 
swimming. He tells about that in his poem called "The 
Prelude," and he also tells now he went skating in winter 
and followed away up the river the reflection of a star in the 
black ice. He was a fine skater and could cut his name in 
the ice even when he became an old man. 

As a boy, he was tall, slender, long-legged, and a little 
awkward, but strong and active. He thought a great deal 
and disturbed his good mother by some of his queer ways. 
She said he was the only one of the children about whom 
she worried. She was sure William would grow up to be 
either very good or very bad, she didn't know which. 

When he was only eight years old his mother died, and 
he was sent away to school. When he was thirteen his 
father died, too, and the five children were taken care of by 
their grandfather and their uncle, who were both of them 
cross and disagreeable most of the time, so that the poor 
children had a hard life of it. 

At school William did fairly well, but he was not a great 
scholar. He was rather too fond of leaving his books and 
tramping over the hills. When he had finished his college 
course he went to France, where a frightful war was then 
going on between the common people and the nobles. It 
was the French Revolution. Young Wordsworth was going 
to plunge into this war and take the part of the people, but 



94 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

his relatives in England succeeded in getting him home again 
and probably saved his life. 

Then he and Dorothy rented a small place in the south 
of England and he began to write poetry. The two used 
to take long walks together in all kinds of weather. They 
were both famous walkers. A friend of Wordsworth's fig- 
ured that during his life he must have walked about two 
hundred thousand miles. If that seems too much, take 
your pencil and figure it yourself, at eight miles a day, which 
was a small average for him. He thought out a great deal of 
his poetry while he was walking, keeping it in his mind until 
he could get home and write it down. He would sometimes 
repeat it to Dorothy, and she would write it down for him. 
They lived out of doors so much that their faces and hands 
became as brown as an Indian's. 

When Wordsworth was nearly thirty he and Dorothy 
went back to the Lake Country and took a little house called 
Dove Cottage, at Grasmere. Then he married Mary Hutchin- 
son, a young woman whom he had known for many years 
and with whom both he and Dorothy had played when they 
were children. The three lived very happily together, first 
in Dove Cottage and then for nearly forty years in a house 
called Rydal Mount on a high hill overlooking Lake Winder- 
mere, with the most wonderful view that you can imagine, 
over the lake and the valley and the woods below. Here 
Wordsworth died at the age of eighty years, honored and 
beloved by all England, and by all who loved poetry the 
world over. 

His best poems are his "Ode to Immortality," his son- 
nets, and some of the short poems which describe a scene 
or tell a story. Like Burns, he took his subjects from com- 
mon life, — the child at the cottage door, the pet lamb, the 
reaper, the daffodils, the butterfly, the sparrow's nest, — 
none of these was too commonplace to give him material 
for a poem. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 95 

THE DAFFODILS 

[This poem was written in 1804, while Wordsworth was living in the 
Lake Country at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. The flowers which he 
mentions were seen about two years earlier, on a walk which the poet 
took with his sister Dorothy through a park along the Ullswater. Dorothy 
Wordsworth's journal for April 15, 1802, contains this description : 

I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones, 
about and above them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a 
pillow of weariness, and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as 
if they verily laughed with the wind that blew directly over the lake to them. 
They looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. 

You will notice that Wordsworth has changed the facts slightly. He 
was not alone, but he probably thought that the poem would be stronger 
if he made a contrast between the lonely traveler and the gay flowers. 
It is very simple, as nearly all of Wordsworth's poetry is, but it seems 
to take hold upon us so that whenever we read it we can see with the 
poet that "host of golden daffodils" and enjoy their brightness. 

If you read this poem during the daffodil season, try to get one or 
two of the flowers. Study them; notice their brilliant color, their 
form, their beauty, their springlike freshness. Then think of them 
growing in a mass, as Wordsworth saw them. Can you imagine a sight 
that would bring more joy to the heart of a poet ?] 

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host, of golden daffodils, 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay : 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 



96 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

The waves beside them danced, but they 
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee : 
A poet could not but be gay, 
In such a jocund company : 
; I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought : 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
> Which is the bliss of solitude ; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Where is the Lake Country of England, and what three English 
poets lived there? 2. Write or tell in your own words the story of 
Wordsworth's life. 3. Point out on a map as many of the places as 
you can that were connected with his life. 4. What figure of speech 
in the first line ? Is it a good one ? Think of a single cloud floating in 
the clear sky. 5. Name two figures in the second stanza. In what 
ways are the daffodils like stars? 

6. What danced beside the daffodils? What is meant by "Outdid 
the sparkling waves in glee"? 7. Explain "A poet could not but be 
gay." Why a poet more than any other person? What is a poet? 
8. What wealth did the sight of the daffodils bring to the poet ? 9. Put 
the last stanza into simpler words of your own. What is a vacant mood ? 
a pensive mood? What is the "inward eye," and how does it make 
solitude blissful? (Do you never think of some beautiful or interesting 
thing that you have seen, and almost think you can see it again in 
imagination? Does it not give you pleasure to think of, when alone? 
Is this a reason for looking at beautiful things whenever we can, and 
for looking at them so earnestly that we shall remember them? Notice 
that the poet did not simply glance at the daffodils; he "gazed and 
gazed" until they made an impression that he never forgot.) 

10. Select the best lines. 11. What does the poet show of himself in 
this poem? 12. Memorize the poem. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 97 

THE SOLITARY REAPER 

Behold her, single in the field, 

Yon solitary Highland lass ! 

Reaping and singing by herself ; 

Stop here, or gently pass ! 

Alone she cuts and binds the grain, 5 

And sings a melancholy strain ; 

listen ! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound. 

No nightingale did ever chaunt 

More welcome notes to weary bands 10 

Of travelers in some shady haunt 

Among Arabian sands : 

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 

In springtime from the cuckoo bird, 

Breaking the silence of the seas is 

Among the farthest Hebrides. 

Will no one tell me what she sings ? 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago : 20 

Or is it some more humble lay, 

Familiar matter of to-day? 

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 

That has been and may be again ? 

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 25 

As if her song could have no ending ; 

1 saw her singing at her work 
And o'er the sickle bending ; 

I listened, motionless and still, 

And as I mounted up the hill 30 

The music in my heart I bore 

Long after it was heard no more. 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Substitute another word for "profound" in line 7. 2. What par- 
ticular force is there in comparing the reaper's song to that of the 
nightingale? Why "among Arabian sands"? 3. Why "unhappy," 
line 19? 4. Compare line 31, "The music in my heart I bore," with 
the last stanza of " The Daffodils." What characteristic of the poet 
does this show ? 

This poem is a picture in words. After reading it one can almost 
see that solitary figure in the field and hear the wild, sweet song. The 
reaper was singing in the language of the Gaelic Highlanders ; therefore 
she could not be understood. 



"MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD" 

My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky ; 
So was it when my life began, 
So is it now I am a man, 
So be it when I shall grow old, 

Or let me die ! 
The child is father of the man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

I. What does this stanza show of the effect of nature on a poet? 
2. What is there in the rainbow, besides its beauty, that would appeal 
to a poet? 3. Explain the last three lines. (Every one is a child be- 
fore he becomes a man; therefore the child is first. "Natural piety" 
means one's filial love for the child that he used to be.) 

Other characteristic poems of Wordsworth: "We Are Seven," 
"Lucy Gray," "Lucy," "To the Cuckoo," "To a Skylark," "The 
Pet Lamb," "Written in March," "Nutting," "Fidelity," "The 
Reverie of Poor Susan," "On the Seashore near Calais," "Three Years 
She Grew," and the two poems " To a Butterfly." 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

1772-1834 

In the little village of Ottery St. Mary, among the hills 
of Devonshire, in England, during the latter half of the 
eighteenth century, lived the Reverend John Coleridge, vicar 
and schoolmaster. He was a pleasant, scholarly, absent- 
minded gentleman, and the care of the large family fell 
upon his good wife Anne, who was quite equal to the task- 
There were thirteen children ; of the youngest, Samuel — 
or Sam, as he was called at home — we are now to talk. 

Sam was born in 1772, two years after Wordsworth and 
the year before the American colonists had their "tea party" 
in Boston harbor. When he was three years old he was sent 
to school to an old lady who taught him his letters so success- 
fully that at six he had read "Robinson Crusoe" and a 
number of other books, including large portions of the Bible. 
A little later he found and read a copy of "The Arabian 
Nights," which so excited him and made him see such sights 
at night that his father took it away and burned it. In 
those days he used to play that he was one of the Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom and would rush out into the fields with 
a stick, slashing the weeds and nettles right and left, calling 
them false pagan dogs and other humiliating names as he cut 
them down. 

When Sam was nine years old his father died, and about 
a year later the boy was sent as a charity pupil to Christ's 
Hospital, commonly called the Blue-coat School, in London. 1 

1 For a description of school life at Christ's Hospital see the story of Leigh 
Hunt, Young and Field Literary Readers, Book Six, page 68. 

99 



ioo ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

There he met Charles Lamb, who later became a great essayist 
and with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. 

Young Coleridge was a dreamy, imaginative boy. He 
would often climb to the flat roof of the school and lying there 
upon his back would watch the white clouds sailing over his 
head, seeing in them strange shapes and pictures. His 
mother, now quite poor, could not send him money for vaca- 
tion visits, and it is supposed that he did not go home to 
Ottery for seven years. 

At nineteen Coleridge entered Cambridge University, just 
as Wordsworth was leaving it. He read an astonishing 
number of books not called for in his class work and was 
considered a brilliant student. His room was often filled 
with fellow students who came just to hear him talk. But he 
did not finish his college course. At the end of three years he 
left Cambridge — we do not know just why, but probably for 
lack of money. During the last summer's vacation before he 
left he had taken a walking trip into Wales. On the way he 
stopped at Oxford, the other of the two great English uni- 
versities, and there made the acquaintance of a student named 
Robert Southey. Sou they greatly admired Coleridge, and 
Coleridge liked Southey. A friendship immediately sprang up 
between them. They planned to go to America and start a 
colony on the banks of the Susquehanna River. The colonists 
were all to marry before leaving England and to take their 
wives with them. In accordance with this plan Coleridge 
and Southey married two sisters who they thought would 
make good colonists, but they never reached the Susque- 
hanna River, for they could not raise money enough to start 
the colony. 

Coleridge then published a small volume of poems, edited 
a paper, lectured on philosophy and literature, and tried in 
various ways to make a living, but did not find it easy. In 
1797 he settled in the little village of Nether Stowey, in the 
south of England, near the home of Wordsworth and his sister 



102 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

Dorothy. There a strong friendship was formed between the 
two poets, and they published together a book of poems called 
" Lyrical Ballads," which included Coleridge's greatest poem, 
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." This was written 
when Coleridge was twenty-six years old, and marks the 
highest point in his life. He was at that time enthusiastic, 
ambitious, and inspired by the companionship and influence 
of Wordsworth and his sister to put forth his best efforts. 
In a little more than a year he had written nearly all his 
best poetry. But his will was weak, and he could not seem 
to stick to one thing for any length of time. Then he began 
to take opium, — occasionally at first, but more and more 
frequently, until at length the habit had fixed itself upon him. 

The following years of Coleridge's life were broken. He 
studied in Germany, he returned to London and wrote a 
translation of one of Schiller's plays, he lectured again and 
wrote for various newspapers. Then he went to visit the 
Wordsworths, who had moved to the north of England and 
were living at Grasmere. He was so delighted with the coun- 
try that he took a house called Greta Hall, at Keswick, not 
far away. Southey later took another part of the same house, 
and for some years the three poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
and Southey, were much together. They are still known as 
the "Lake Poets," from their having lived in this Lake 
Country of England. 

But Coleridge lost strength and will power ; he was 
continually struggling to overcome the opium habit, and 
continually yielding to it again ; his health failed ; he began 
many things but finished nothing. Leaving his family to the 
care of Southey, he went to London again, where the greatest 
men of his time gathered to hear him talk, for he was the 
most interesting talker that England had known since Dr. 
Johnson. But he could no longer apply himself to any 
definite work, and he died in 1834, conquered by the enemy 
that he had admitted years before. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 103 

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

[The plan of the "Ancient Mariner" was thought out during a walk 
near Nether Stowey one afternoon in the autumn of 1798 by Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, and Dorothy Wordsworth. One of them suggested their 
writing a poem together. Coleridge told of a weird dream that a friend 
had repeated to him a short time before, about being alone on a ship 
with a crew of dead men. This seemed a striking subject. Coleridge 
made the outline, Wordsworth suggested the shooting of the albatross. 
They composed the first stanzas as they walked, but Wordsworth soon 
saw that Coleridge was the only one of them who could handle such a 
theme ; so it was left to Coleridge. The poem, when finished, was 
printed in their book, "Lyrical Ballads."] 

PART I 
It is an ancient mariner, An ancient mariner 

And he stoppeth one of three. meeteth three gai- 

"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye wedding feTst°and 

NOW wherefore Stopp'st thou me ? detaineth one. 

"The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 5 

And I am next of kin ; 

The guests are met, the feast is set : 

May'st hear the merry din." 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 

"There was a ship," quoth he. IO 

''Hold off ! unhand me, graybeard loon !" 

Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 

He holds him with his glittering eye — The wedding guest 

The wedding guest stood still, l^lnt^ 

And listens like a three years' child : sea- faring man, x 5 

The mariner hath his will. * nd c ° n ff ined to 

hear his tale. 

The wedding guest sat on a stone : 
He cannot choose but hear ; 



io4 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



And thus spake on that ancient man 
The bright-eyed mariner. 



5 The mariner tells 
how the ship sailed 
southward with a 
good wind and fair 
weather, till it 
reached the Line. 



The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, 

Merrily did we drop 

Below the kirk, below the hill, 

Below the lighthouse top. 

The Sun came up upon the left, 
Out of the sea came he ! 
And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the sea. 



The ship drawn by 
a storm toward the 
south pole. 



And now the Storm-blast came, and he 
Was tyrannous and strong : 
He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 
And chased us south along. 



is 



With sloping masts and dipping prow, 

As who pursued with yell and blow 

Still treads the shadow of his foe, 

And forward bends his head, 

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 

And southward aye we fled. 



And now there came both mist and snow, 
And it grew wondrous cold ; 
And ice, mast-high, came floating by, 
As green as emerald. 



And through the drifts the snowy clifts 
Did send a dismal sheen : 



25 The land of ice and 
of fearful sounds 
where no living 

thing was to be Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — 
seen - The ice was all between. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



105 



The ice was here, the ice was there, 

The ice was all around : 

It cracked and growled, and roared and 

howled, 
Like noises in a swound ! 

At length did cross an albatross : 
Thorough the fog it came ; 
As if it had been a Christian soul, 
We hailed it in God's name. 

It ate the food it ne'er had eat, 
And round and round it flew. 
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ; 
The helmsman steered us through ! 

And a good south wind sprung up behind ; 

The albatross did follow, 

And every day, for food or play, 

Came to the mariners' hollo ! 

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 

It perched for vespers nine ; 

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, 

Glimmered the white moonshine. 



Till a great sea 
bird called the 
albatross came 
through the snow- 
fog, and was re- 
ceived with great 
joy and hospitality. 



And lo ! the 
albatross proveth 
a bird of good 
omen, and followeth 
the ship as it re- 
turned northward 
through fog and 
floating ice. 



" God save thee, ancient mariner ! The ancient 

From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — Sl^ttoSS - ^ 

Why look'st thou SO?" — With my CrOSSboW bird of good omen. 

I shot the albatross. 



PART II 

The Sun now rose upon the right : 
Out of the sea came he, 
Still hid in mist, and on the left 
Went down into the sea. 



25 



io6 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



His shipmates cry 
out against the 
ancient mariner, for 
killing the bird of 
good luck. 



And the good south wind still blew behind, 
But no sweet bird did follow, 
Nor any day for food or play 
Came to the mariners' hollo ! 

And I had done a hellish thing, 

And it would work 'em woe : 

For all averred I had killed the bird 

That made the breeze to blow. 

Ah, wretch ! said they, the bird to slay, 

That made the breeze to blow ! 



15 



The fair breeze 
continues ; the ship 
enters the Pacific 
Ocean, and sails 
northward, even un- 
til it reaches the 
Line. 



The ship hath 
been suddenly 
becalmed. 



25 



And the albatross 
begins to be 
avenged. 



30 



The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 

The furrow followed free ; 

We were the first that ever burst 

Into that silent sea. 

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 
'Twas sad as sad could be ; 
And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea ! 

All in a hot and copper sky 

The bloody sun at noon 

Right up above the mast did stand, 

No bigger than the moon. 

Day after day, day after day, 
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

Water, water, everywhere, 
And all the boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



107 



About, about, in reei and rout 
The death-fires danced at night ; 
The water, like a witch's oils, 
Burnt green, and blue, and white. 



And every tongue, through utter drought, 
Was withered at the root ; 
We could not speak, no more than if 
We had been choked with soot. 

Ah ! welladay ! what evil looks 
Had I from old and young ! 
Instead of the cross, the albatross 
About my neck was hung. 



The shipmates in 
their sore distress 
would fain throw 
the whole guilt 
on the ancient 
mariner; in sign 
whereof they 
hang the dead sea 
bird round his neck. 



PART III 

There passed a weary time. Each throat 

Was parched, and glazed each eye. 

A weary time ! a weary time ! 

How glazed each weary eye ! 

When looking westward, I beheld 

A something in the sky. 

At first it seemed a little speck, 
And then it seemed a mist ; 
It moved and moved, and took at last 
A certain shape, I wist. 

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 
And still it neared and neared : 
As if it dodged a water sprite, 
It plunged and tacked and veered. 



The ancient 
mariner beholdeth 
a sign in the ele- 
ment afar off. 



15 



25 



The western wave was all aflame. 
The day was well-nigh done ! 



io8 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad, bright Sun ; 
When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the Sun. 



5 It seemeth him but 
the skeleton of a 
ship. 



And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 
(Heaven's Mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon grate he peered 
With broad and burning face. 



No twilight within 
the courts of the 



At the rising of the 
moon, 



15 



One after another, 



8S 



His shipmates drop 
down dead: 



The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 
At one stride comes the dark ; 
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, 
Off shot the specter bark. 

We listened and looked sideways up ! 

Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 

My lifeblood seemed to sip ! 

The stars were dim, and thick the night, 

The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed 

white ; 
From the sails the dew did drip — 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
The horned Moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip. 

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, 
Too quick for groan or sigh, 
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 
And cursed me with his eye. 

Four times fifty living men, 
(And I heard no sigh nor groan) 
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, 
They dropped down one by one. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



109 



PART IV 

"I fear thee, ancient mariner! 

I fear thy skinny hand ! 

And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 

As is the ribbed sea sand. 

"I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 
Fear not, fear not, thou wedding guest ! 
This body dropt not down. 

Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 
And never a saint took pity on 
My soul in agony. 



The wedding 
guest feareth that 
a spirit is talking to 
him; 



but the ancient 
mariner assureth 
him of his bodily 
life, and proceedeth, 
to relate his horrible 
penance. 



I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray ; 
But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
A wicked whisper came, and made 
My heart as dry as dust. 

I closed my lids, and kept them close, 

And the balls like pulses beat ; 

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the 

sky 
Lay like a load on my weary eye, 
And the dead were at my feet. 



15 



The moving Moon went up the sky, 
And nowhere did abide : 
Softly she was going up, 
And a star or two beside — 

Her beams bemocked the sultry main, 
Like April hoarfrost spread ; 



25 



no 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



By the light of the 
moon he beholdeth 
God's creatures of 
the great calm. 



Their beauty and 
their happiness. 



He blesseth them 
in his heart. 



But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 
The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 

Beyond the shadow of the ship 

I watched the water snakes : 

They moved in tracks of shining white, 

And when they reared, the elfish light 

Fell off in hoary flakes. 

Within the shadow of the ship 

I watched their rich attire : 

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 

They coiled arid swam ; and every track 

Was a flash of golden fire. 

O happy living things ! no tongue 

Their beauty might declare : 

A spring of love gushed from my heart, 

And I blessed them unaware : 

Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 

And I blessed them unaware. 



20 The spell begins to 
break. 



The selfsame moment I could pray ; 
And from my neck so free 
The albatross fell off and sank 
Like lead into the sea. 



25 



PART V 

O sleep ! it is a gentle thing, 
Beloved from pole to pole ! 
To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 
That slid into my soul. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE in 

And soon I heard a roaring wind : He heareth strange 

Tl ,. , sounds and seeth 

It did not come anear ; strange sights and 

But with its SOUnd it shook the Sails, commotions in the 

r^i ,i . j sky and the element. 

That were so thm and sere. 

The upper air burst into life ! 5 

And a hundred fire flags sheen, 

To and fro they were hurried about ! 

And to and fro, and in and out, 

The wan stars danced between. 

And the coming wind did roar more loud, io 

And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 

And the rain poured down from one black 

cloud ; 
The moon was at its edge. 



Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 

I heard the skylark sing ; is 

Sometimes all little birds that are, 

How they seemed to fill the sea and air 

With their sweet jargoning ! 

And now 't was like all instruments, 

Now like a lonely flute ; to 

And now it is an angel's song, 

That makes the heavens be mute. 

It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 

A noise like of a hidden brook 25 

In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 



112 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



PART VI 



The curse is finally 
expiated 



10 



But soon there breathed a wind on me, 
Nor sound nor motion made : 
Its path was not upon the sea, 
In ripple or in shade. 

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek 
Like a meadow gale of spring — 
It mingled strangely with my fears, 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 
Yet she sailed softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — 
On me alone it blew. 



And the ancient 
mariner beholdeth 
his native country. 



15 



O dream of joy ! is this indeed 
The lighthouse top I see? 
Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
Is this mine own countree? 



The harbor bay was clear as glass, 
So smoothly.it was strewn ! 
And on the bay the moonlight lay, 
And the shadow of the moon. 

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, 
That stands above the rock : 
The moonlight steeped in silentness 
The steady weathercock. 



25 



But soon I heard the dash of oars, 
I heard the pilot's cheer ; 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



ii3 



My head was turned perforce away, 
And I saw a boat appear. 

The pilot and the pilot's boy, 
I heard them coming fast : 
Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy 
The dead men could not blast. 

I saw a third — I heard his voice : 

It is the hermit good ! 

He singe th loud his godly hymns 

That he makes in the wood. 

He '11 shrieve my soul, he '11 wash away 

The albatross's blood. 



10 



PART VII 

This hermit good lives in that wood 
Which slopes down to the sea. 
How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 
That come from a far countree. 



The hermit of the 
wood approacheth 
the ship. 



15 



The boat came closer to the ship, 
But I nor spake nor stirred ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship, 
And straight a sound was heard. 

Under the water it rumbled on, 
Still louder and more dread : 
It reached the ship, it split the bay ; 
The ship went down like lead. 

Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 
Which sky and ocean smote, 
Like one that hath been seven days drowned 
My body lay afloat ; 



20 



The ship suddenly 
sinketh. 



The ancient 
mariner is saved 
in the pilot's boat. 



25 



ii 4 



ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



But swift as dreams, myself I found 
Within the pilot's boat. 



The ancient 
mariner earnestly 
entreateth the 
hermit to shrieve 
him ; and the 
penance of life falls 
on him, 



And now, all in my own countree, 
I stood on the firm land ! 
The hermit stepped forth from the boat, 
And scarcely he could stand. 

"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man !" 
The hermit crossed his brow. 
"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say — 
What manner of man art thou?" 

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched 

With a woeful agony, 

Which forced me to begin my tale ; 

And then it left me free. 



15 And ever and anon 
throughout his 
future life an agony 
constraineth him to 
travel from land to 
land, 



25 



Since then, at an uncertain hour, 
That agony returns : 
And till my ghastly tale is told, 
This heart within me burns. 

I pass, like night, from land to land ; 
I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know the man that must hear me : 
To him my tale I teach. 

What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 
The wedding guests are there : 
But in the garden bower the bride 
And bridemaids singing are : 
And hark the little vesper bell, 
Which biddeth me to prayer ! 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 115 

O wedding guest ! this soul hath been 
Alone on a wide, wide sea : 
So lonely 't was, that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

O sweeter than the marriage feast, 5 

'T is sweeter far to me, 

To walk together to the kirk 

With a goodly company ! — 

To walk together to the kirk, 

And all together pray, 10 

While each to his great Father bends, 

Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 

And youths and maidens gay ! 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 

To thee, thou wedding guest : 15 

He prayeth well, who loveth well ^ d to teach > b >' 

B, 1 1 i • i i i his own example, 

oth man an4 bird and beast. love and reverence 

to all things that 

He prayeth best, who loveth best ^th!^ *** 

All things both great and small ; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 20 

He made and loveth all. 

The mariner, whose eye is bright, 

Whose beard with age is hoar, 

Is gone : and now the wedding guest 

Turned from the bridegroom's door. 25 

He went like one that hath been stunned, 
And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man, 
He rose the morrow morn. 



n6 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 



i. Give a sketch of Coleridge's life. 2. How did "The Ancient 
Mariner" come to be written? 3. Describe the opening scene. 4. Who 
speaks the words in lines 3-8, page 103? 5. Why was the wedding 
guest compelled to listen? 6. The poem consists of a series of wonder- 
ful pictures. Note them as you read, and make a list of them, as (1) the 
ship leaving the harbor, (2) the storm, (3) the passage through the ice, 
and so on. Which do you like best? 7. If the sun came up on the left 
and went down on the right, in what direction was the ship going? 
8. In what part of the world was the ice found ? 

9. Notice the figure of the ship chased by the storm, like a man 
bending forward and running away from some pursuer, who is so close 
that the pursued walks upon his shadow. 10. Explain the compari- 
son "Like noises in a swound." 11. Why did the sailors welcome the 
albatross? 12. What effect did the sailors think the bird had upon 
the ship? 13. Put into simple prose, lines 17-20, page 105. 14. What 
made the "fog-smoke"? Try to see the picture of the "white moon- 
shine." 15. Why did the mariner shoot the albatross? 16. What do 
lines 25-28, page 105, tell you about the course of the ship? 

17. What do you understand by a "copper" sky? "bloody" sun? 
"As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean"? 18. Explain lines 
27-30, page 106. 19. Why did the sailors hang the dead bird about 
the ancient mariner's neck ? 20. What does the ship which the mariner 
sees show itself to be, as it passes across the setting sun? Explain this 
picture. 21. What made the change from day to night so sudden (lines 
9-10, page 108) ? What condition of the air makes long twilights and 
what makes short ones ? 22. Explain lines 14-15, page 108. 23. Explain 
"star-dogged Moon," "cursed me with his eye." 

24. Explain "or ever," line 14, page 109. 25. Why for a time 
could the mariner not pray? What made it possible at last for him to 
pray, and what was the result? 26. Explain "shrieve me, holy man," 
"The hermit crossed his brow" 27. After his rescue, how did the 
mariner get relief from his agony when it came upon him? 28. What 
effect did this voyage have upon the mariner, and how does he express 
it? 29. What lesson did the wedding guest receive that made him a 
wiser man? Why was he sadder? Memorize lines 21-28, page 104; 
lines 15-30, page 106; lines 14-28, page in ; lines 14-21, page 115. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

1771-1832 

Among the great British writers there are few who have 
shown as fine a character as Scott. He was an honest man, 
who had troubles and overcame them, who worked hard and 
cheerfully, and knew no such thing as failure. 

Sir Walter Scott was born in the fine old city of Edin- 
burgh in the summer of 1771, about four years before the 
American Revolution broke out. When he was not quite 
two years old he had a serious illness, and after it he was 
found to have lost the use of one of his legs. This was his 
first trouble. 

His parents thought that if he could live in the country, 
out of doors, among the green fields and hills, his leg would 
grow stronger. So they sent him to his grandparents on a 
farm in the valley of the Tweed, not far from Melrose Abbey. 
This out-of-door life helped but did not cure him, and through- 
out his life he was slightly lame. 

In the country he used to lie on the grass, watching the 
sheep and listening to the stories which an old shepherd 
told him about the battles that had been fought in that 
border country between Scotland and England in the old 
days. On a great rock near by stood the ruins of a castle 
which had once held many a gallant company of lords and 
ladies and seen many a hunt arid tournament and many a 
fight. Then, at bedtime, his grandmother would tell him 
of the deeds of his forefathers, who were all of them brave 
men. Every rock and every ruin in that country had some 
story of the border wars. When the boy went back to his 

117 



n& ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

father and mother in Edinburgh he was eight years old and 
knew more of Scottish history and Scottish legends than 
most men ever know. He went to school in Edinburgh 
until he was twelve and then spent three years in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. But he cared for little except history, 
and his classmates remembered him chiefly for his stories of 
the border wars, which he used to tell to them in the evenings 
as they gathered about and listened breathlessly, asking him, 
whenever he stopped, to tell them more. 

At fifteen he left the University and went to work in his 
father's law office — for I should have told you that his 
father was a lawyer. Young Walter did not like that sort 
of life, but he followed it because his father wanted him to 
do so. While he was working there, he began to put into 
verse the old stories of knights and warriors which he knew 
so well. First he translated some German legends ; then 
he published several books of old Scottish songs which he 
had picked up here and there ; and at last he began to write 
poetry of his own, which told of the Scottish chiefs and the 
border wars. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," 
and ''The Lady of the Lake" came out, one after another, 
and soon made him famous. He bought a large piece of 
land on the Tweed near Melrose Abbey, in the country that 
he loved so well, built a castle of his own, which he called 
Abbotsford, and lived there with his wife and his four children 
and his dogs. He greatly loved his dogs and always felt that 
they were a part of his family. There he wrote his great 
stories, "Ivanhoe," "Guy Mannering," and "Rob Roy" ; his 
Scottish history stories, "Tales of a Grandfather" ; and many 
more. The king honored him by giving him the title of 
baronet, and he became Sir Walter. 

Then his second great trouble came upon him. He put 
his money into a business which did not pay, and woke up 
one morning to find not only that he had lost everything 
but that he owed more than half a million dollars besides. 



120 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

The men to whom he owed the money were kind to him 
and would have given him a part of it, but he said No, it 
was right that he should pay it ; and if they would only 
give him time, he would find a way. So he set to work 
cheerfully to write harder and faster. For a long time he 
wrote two books every year. They sold well and he had 
almost paid the debt when the hard work and strain broke 
him down and he became very ill. Then his wife died, and 
then his little grandson, Johnny Hugh, whom he loved more 
than his own life, and at last on a September day in 1832 
he himself died also, saying to Lockhart, his son-in-law, as 
his last words, "My dear, be a good man." Scott had been 
famous, greatly loved, and at one time rich, but after a life 
of more than sixty years he felt that the most important thing 
of all was just to be good. That is something well worth 
thinking about. 



THE ARCHERY MATCH AT ASHBY 

[This selection is from "Ivanhoe," one of Scott's best-known novels. 
Prince John, who was ruling England during the absence in Palestine 
of his brother Richard I, or Richard the "Lion-Hearted," arranged for 
a great tournament at Ashby. After several days of fierce encounters 
by the knights, an archery match was held for the yeomen, on the last 
day of the tournament. 

On one of the preceding days Prince John had noticed in the crowd 
a bold fellow who, he thought, had failed to show him the respect due 
to his high rank. This angered the prince, and he determined to hu- 
miliate the yeoman in the archery match. He did not know that this 
same yeoman was no other than Robin Hood, who had come in disguise 
to the tournament to see the sport. 1 

Prince John stepped from his royal seat to view more 
nearly the persons of these chosen yeomen, several of whom 
wore the royal livery. Having satisfied his curiosity by this 
investigation, he looked for the object of his resentment, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 121 

whom he observed standing on the same spot and with the 
same composed countenance which he had exhibited upon 
the preceding day. 

"Fellow," said Prince John, "I guessed by thy insolent 
babble thou wert no true lover of the long bow, and I sees 
thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merrymen 
as stand yonder." 

"Under favor, sir," replied the yeoman, "I have another 
reason for refraining to shoot, besides the fearing discom- 
fiture and disgrace." 10 

"And what is thy other reason?" said Prince John, who, 
for some cause which perhaps he could not himself have 
explained, felt a painful curiosity respecting this individual. 

"Because," replied the woodsman, "I know not if these 
yeomen and I are used to shoot at the same marks ; and 15 
because, moreover, I know not how your Grace might relish 
the winning of a third prize by one who has unwittingly 
fallen under your displeasure." 

Prince John colored as he put the question, "What is thy 
name , yeoman ? " 20 

"Locksley," answered the yeoman. 

"Then, Locksley," said Prince John, "thou shalt shoot in 
thy turn, when these yeomen have displayed their skill. If 
thou earnest the prize, I will add to it twenty nobles; but 
if thou losest it, thou shalt be stript of thy Lincoln green and 25 
scourged out of the lists with bowstrings, for a wordy and 
insolent braggart." 

"And how if I refuse to shoot on such a wager?" said the 
yeoman. "Your Grace's power, supported, as it is, by 
so many men at arms, may indeed easily strip and scourge 30 
me, but cannot compel me to bend or to draw my bow." 

"If thou refusest my fair proffer," said the Prince, "the 
provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow 
and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a faint- 
hearted craven." 35 



122 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

. "This is no fair chance you put on me, proud Prince," 
said the yeoman, "to compel me to peril myself against 
the best archers of Leicester and Staffordshire, under the 
penalty of infamy, if they should overshoot me. Neverthe- 

5 less, I will obey your pleasure." 

"Look to him close, men at arms," said Prince John; 
"his heart is sinking. I am jealous lest he attempt to escape 
the trial. And do you, good fellows, shoot boldly round ; 
a buck and a butt of wine are ready for your refreshment in 

10 yonder tent, when the prize is won." 

A target was placed at the upper end of the southern 
avenue which led to the lists. The contending archers 
took their station, in turn, at the bottom of the southern 
access, the distance between that station and the mark 

15 allowing full distance for what was called a shot at rovers. 
The archers, having previously determined by lot their order 
of precedence, were to shoot, each, three shafts in succession. 
The sports were regulated by an officer of inferior rank termed 
the provost of the games ; for the high rank of the marshals 

20 of the lists would have been held degraded, had they con- 
descended to superintend the sports of the yeomanry. 

One by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their 
shafts yeomanlike and bravely. Of twenty-four arrows shot 
in succession, ten were fixed in the target, and the others 

25 ranged so near it that, considering the distance of the mark, 
it was accounted good archery. Of the ten shafts which hit 
the target, two within the inner ring were shot by Hubert, 
a forester in the service of Malvoisin, who was accordingly 
pronounced victorious. 

30 "Now, Locksley," said Prince John to the bold yeoman, 
with a bitter smile, "wilt thou try conclusions with Hubert, 
or wilt thou yield up bow, baldric, and quiver to the provost 
of the sports?" 

"Sith it be no better," said Locksley, "I am content to 

35 try my fortune ; on condition that when I have shot two shafts 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 123 

at yonder mark of Hubert's, he shall be bound to shoot one 
at that which I shall propose." 

"That is but fair," answered Prince John, "and it shall 
not be refused thee. If thou dost beat this braggart, Hubert, 
I will fill the bugle with silver pennies for thee." 5 

"A man can but do his best," answered Hubert; "but 
my grandsire drew a good long bow at Hastings, and I trust 
not to dishonor his memory." 

The former target was now removed, and a fresh one 
of the same size placed in its room. Hubert, who, as victor 10 
in the first trial of skill, had the right to shoot first, took his 
aim with great deliberation, long measuring the distance with 
his eye, while he held in his hand his bended bow, with the 
arrow placed on the string. At length he made a step forward, 
and raising the bow at the full stretch of his left arm, till 15 
the center or grasping-place was nigh level with his face, he 
drew his bowstring to his ear. 

The arrow whistled through the air and lighted within 
the inner ring of the target, but not exactly in the center. 

"You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert," said his 20 
antagonist, bending his bow, "or that had been a better shot." 

So saying, and without showing the least anxiety to pause 
upon his aim, Locksley stepped to the appointed station and 
shot his arrow as carelessly in appearance as if he had not even 
looked at the mark. He was speaking almost at the instant 25 
that the shaft left the bowstring, yet it alighted in the target 
two inches nearer to the white spot which marked the center 
than that of Hubert. 

"By the light of heaven!" said Prince John to Hubert, 
u an thou suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, 30 
thou art worthy of the gallows !" 

Hubert had but one set speech for all occasions. "An 
your Highness were to hang me," he said, "a man can but 
do his best. Nevertheless, my grandsire drew a good 
bow — " 35 



124 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

"The foul fiend on thy grandsire and all his generation ! " 
interrupted John; " shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it 
shall be worse for thee ! " 

Thus exhorted, Hubert resumed his place, and not neglect- 

sing the caution which he had received from his adversary, 

he made the necessary allowance for a very light air of wind, 

which had just arisen, and shot so successfully that his arrow 

alighted in the very center of the target. 

"A Hubert! a Hubert!" shouted the populace, more 
10 interested in a known person than in a stranger. "In the 
clout ! — in the clout ! — a Hubert forever ! " 

"Thou canst not mend that shot, Locksley," said the 
Prince, with an insulting smile. 

"I will notch his shaft for him, however," replied Locksley. 
15 And letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution 
than before, it lighted right upon that of his competitor, 
which it split to shivers. The people who stood around 
were so astonished at his wonderful dexterity that they could 
not even give vent to their surprise in their usual clamor. 
20 "This must be the devil, and no man of flesh and blood," 
whispered the yeomen to each other ; " such archery was never 
seen since a bow was first bent in Britain." 

"And now," said Locksley, "I will crave your Grace's 
permission to plant such a mark as is used in the North 
25 Country ; and welcome every brave yeoman who shall try a 
shot at it to win a smile from the bonny lass he loves best." 

He then turned to leave the lists. "Let your guards 
attend me," he said, "if you please. I go but to cut a rod 
from the next willow bush." 
30 Prince John made a signal that some attendants should 
follow him in case of his escape; but the cry of "Shame! 
shame!" which burst from the multitude, induced him to 
alter his ungenerous purpose. 

Locksley returned almost instantly with a willow wand 
35 about six feet in length, perfectly straight and rather thicker 






SIR WALTER SCOTT 125 

than a man's thumb. He began to peel this with great 
composure, observing at the same time that to ask a good 
woodsman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been 
used was to put shame upon his skill. For his own part, he 
said, and in the land where he was bred, men would as soon 5 
take for their mark King Arthur's round table, which held sixty 
knights around it. "A child of seven years old," he said, 
" might hit yonder target with a headless shaft; but," added 
he, walking deliberately to the other end of the lists and stick- 
ing the willow wand upright in the ground, "he that hits that 10 
rod at five-score yards, I call him an archer fit to bear both 
bow and quiver before a king, an it were the stout King 
Richard himself." 

"My grandsire," said Hubert, "drew a good bow at the 
battle of Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life — 15 
and neither will I. If this yeoman can cleave that rod, 
I give him the bucklers — or rather I yield to the devil that 
is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill. A man can but 
do his best, and I will not shoot where I am sure to miss. I 
might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or 20 
at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white 
streak which I can hardly see." 

"Cowardly dog!" said Prince John. "Sirrah Locksley, 
do thou shoot; but if thou hittest such a mark I will say 
thou art the first man ever did so. Howe'er it be, thou 25 
shalt not crow over us with a mere show of superior skill." 

"I will do my best, as Hubert says," answered Locksley; 
"no man can do more." 

So saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present oc- 
casion looked with attention to his weapon, and changed 30 
the string, which he thought was no longer truly round, 
having been a little frayed by the two former shots. He 
then took his aim with some deliberation, and the multi- 
tude awaited the event in breathless silence. The archer 
vindicated their opinion of his skill; his arrow split the 35 



126 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

willow rod against which it was aimed. A jubilee of accla- 
mations followed ; and even Prince John, in admiration of 
Locksley's skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his person. 
" These twenty nobles," he said, " which with the bugle 
5 thou hast fairly won, are thine own ; we will make them fifty 
if thou wilt take livery and service with us as a yeoman of 
our body guard and be near to our person. For never did 
so strong a hand bend a bow, or so true an eye direct a shaft." 
" Pardon me, noble Prince," said Locksley ; "but I have 

10 vowed that if ever I take service it should be with your royal 
brother King Richard. These twenty nobles I leave to 
Hubert, who has this day drawn as brave a bow as his grand- 
sire did at Hastings. Had his modesty not refused the trial, 
he would have hit the wand as well as I." 

15 Hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the 
bounty of the stranger; and Locksley, anxious to escape 
further observation, mixed with the crowd and was seen no 
more. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Scott's life. 2. From what book is this 
selection taken? Name as many of Scott's other novels as you know, 
and two or three of his poems. 3. What sort of person was Prince 
John, and how did he happen to be ruling England at the time of this 
story? 4. Explain "yeomen," "royal livery," "merrymen," "under 
favor." 5. Use simpler words for "the object of his resentment," "un- 
wittingly." What was "Lincoln green"? 

6. What does Locksley's reply to the prince show you of Locksley's 
character? 7. What other words or phrases might be used for "craven," 
"infamy," "lists," "order of precedence," "yeomanlike," "try con- 
clusions," "baldric"? What was a "shot at rovers"? (A rising shot, 
not direct.) 8. Why did Hubert say that his grandsire drew a good long 
bow at Hastings? g. What does Prince John's remark to Hubert after 
Locksley's first shot show you of the prince's character? 10. What 
simpler or more common words might be used for "adversary," "a 
Hubert!" (Hurrah for Hubert!), "in the clout," "mend that shot," 
"precaution," "competitor," "dexterity " ? 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 127 

11. What further hint of John's character do we get from his asking 
attendants to go with Locksley as he cuts the willow wand, and what 
did the cries of the people show? 12. Use simpler words or phrases for 
"vindicated their opinion," "a jubilee of acclamations." 13. What does 
Locksley, or Robin Hood, show of his character in this selection? 
What does Hubert show ? What does Prince John show ? 

Other interesting selections from " Ivanhoe " are The Tournament 
(chap, xii) and The Attack on the Castle (chaps, xxix-xxxi). "The 
Talisman" is also full of stirring scenes which illustrate the life of both 
European and Saracen soldiers during the Crusades, and which show 
King Richard with the English army in Palestine. 



MARMION AND DOUGLAS 

[Marmion was a character invented by Scott as the hero of his poem 
of the same name. He was supposed to be an English nobleman sent 
by Henry the Eighth as an ambassador to James the Fourth of Scotland 
about 1 5 13 to try to prevent the Scots from making war upon England, 
as England was already at war with France and did not wish to meet 
another enemy. 

Marmion was asked by King James to remain for a time in the castle 
of Tantallon as the guest of the Scottish Lord Douglas, Earl of Angus. 
Marmion, seeing that the Scots continued their preparations for war, and 
that they offered no hope of peace, set out at length for the English camp 
of the Earl of Surrey. ' In taking leave of his host he offered his hand, 
which Douglas refused. On the next day fighting began between the 
two armies and resulted in the battle of Flodden, in which the Scots 
were defeated and their hopes crushed. Marmion is supposed to have 
died fighting, in the moment of victory.] 

The train from out the castle drew, 
But Marmion stopped to bid adieu : 

" Though something I might 'plain," he said, 
"Of cold respect to stranger guest, 
Sent hither by your king's behest, 

While in Tantallon's towers I stayed, 
Part we in friendship from your land, 
And, noble earl, receive my hand." 



128 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

But Douglas round him drew his cloak, 
Folded his arms, and thus he spoke : 
"My manors, halls, and bowers shall still 
Be open at my sovereign's will 
5 To each one whom he lists, howe'er 

Unmeet to be the owner's peer. 
My castles are my king's alone, 
From turret to foundation-stone — 
The hand of Douglas is his own, 
10 And never shall in friendly grasp 

The hand of such as Marmion clasp." 

Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, 
And shook his very frame for ire, 
And — "This to me ! " he said, 
i 5 "An 't were not for thy hoary beard, 

Such hand as Marmion's had not spared 

To cleave the Douglas' head ! 
And first I tell thee, haughty peer, 
He who does England's message here, 
20 Although the meanest in her state, 

May well, proud Angus, be thy mate ; 
And, Douglas, more I tell thee here, 

Even in thy pitch of pride, 
Here in thy hold, thy vassals near, — 
25 Nay, never look upon your lord, 

And lay your hands upon your sword, — 
I tell thee, thou 'rt defied ! 

And if thou saidst I am not peer 
To any lord in Scotland here, 
30 Lowland or Highland, far or near, ' 

Lord Angus, thou hast lied !" 
On the earl's cheek the flush of rage 
O'ercame the ashen hue of age : 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 129 

Fierce he broke forth, "And dar'st thou then 
To beard the lion in his den, 

The Douglas in his hall? 
And hop'st thou hence unscathed to go? 
No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no ! 5 

Up drawbridge, grooms — what, warder, ho ! 

Let the portcullis fall." 
Lord Marmion turned, — well was his need, — 
And dashed the rowels in his steed, 

Like arrow through the archway sprung, IO 

The ponderous grate behind him rung ; 
To pass there was such scanty room, 
The bars, descending, razed his plume. 

The steed along the drawbridge flies 

Just as it trembled on the rise ; *5 

Not lighter does the swallow skim 

Along the smooth lake's level brim : 

And when Lord Marmion reached his band, 

He halts, and turns with clenched hand, 

And shout of loud defiance pours, 2 ° 

And shook his gauntlet at the towers. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Explain who Marmion and Douglas were, and why Marmion 
was leaving the castle. Where were Marmion's attendants and where 
were Douglas's? 2. Explain "The train from out the castle drew," 
"Though something I might 'plain," "your king's behest" "Tantallon's 
towers," "my manors" "unmeet to be the owner's peer." 3. What is 
the duty of a host towards his guest ? What added reason had Mar- 
mion for being well treated? 4. What did Douglas mean by saying 
that his castles were his king's but his hand was his own? 5. What do 
you think of Douglas's refusal to take Marmion's hand ? 

6. Explain "He who does England's message here." Why would 
the lowliest of Englishmen bearing the King's message be equal in rank 
to any Scotch nobleman? 7. What do we now call a person who bears 



130 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

such a message as Marmion bore? 8. Explain "pitch of pride." "flush 
of rage." 9. To whom are lines 25, 26, page 128, addressed, and what 
do they show is happening? 10. Explain the different uses of the word 
"peer" in lines 18 and 28, page 128. n. What do you think of Mar- 
mion's language? 12. Explain "to beard the lion," "Saint Bride of 
Bothwell." (Saint Bridget. There was a church dedicated to her at 
Bothwell. She was patron saint of the Douglas.) 

13. What order did Douglas give to his attendants? Was he justified 
in giving such an order? Give reasons. 14. Explain "warder," "port- 
cullis," "rowels." 15. W T hich of the two men behaved the better? 



BREATHES THERE THE MAN WITH SOUL SO DEAD 

[This noble burst of patriotism is found at the beginning of the sixth 
canto of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." An old Scotch harper has 
been singing to the ladies of Newark Castle ballads of love and warfare. 
His listeners praise his lay and ask him why he chooses to wander through 
Scotland, poor and neglected, while many in England would hear him 
, gladly. He strikes his harp again and answers with these lines :] 

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, 

Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ! 

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
5 As home his footsteps he hath turned, 

From wandering on a foreign strand ! 

If such there breathe, go, mark him well ; 

For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 

High though his titles, proud his name, 
10 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; 

Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 

The wretch, concentered all in self, 

Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 

And, doubly dying, shall go down 
15 To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 



CHARLES LAMB 

i 775-1834 

In the midst of the noise and bustle of the London streets 
there is a quiet spot beside the Thames, shut in between high 
walls and iron gates and used these many years for lawyers' 
offices and lodgings. It is called the Temple. One enters it 
through a dark and narrow passage and passes into a maze of 
queer little courts and alleys with patches of green turf here 
and there and bits of shrubbery, and at last finds himself in a 
sort of inclosed park having a fountain and a view of the 
river, with its mysterious ships and barges moving up and 
down — no one knows whither. 

In one of these courts of the Temple Charles Lamb was 
born in 1775, the son of a poor law clerk and the youngest 
of seven children, only three of whom lived beyond their 
babyhood. As he grew up, the neighbors knew him as a 
gentle, thoughtful boy, stammering somewhat in his speech 
and halting a trifle in his walk. He was shy before strangers, 
yet gay among his playfellows, and so kind and sweet-tempered 
that everybody loved him. The lawyer for whom his father 
worked took an interest in the lad and in his sister Mary, 
and allowed the children to spend an occasional afternoon in 
his library. These were Charles's happiest hours, except now 
and then a rare evening when his father by saving would have 
a spare shilling to take him to the play. His father loved 
these evenings as much as the boy did, but they did not come 
too often. 

131 



132 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

When Charles was seven the lawyer whom his father served 
found a chance to send the boy to Christ's Hospital, or the 
" Blue-coat School," and there he met Coleridge. The two 
lads were much together, and when the food on the school 
table was particularly poor and the milk porridge particularly 
thin, Charles would smuggle in a cake or two and share his 
feast with Sam Coleridge and a few other friends. 

When Charles was ready for college he met with a great 
disappointment. Instead of going on, as Coleridge had 
done, he was obliged to leave school and go to work to help 
support the family. His father was now growing old, his 
mother was far from well, his older brother had left home and 
had apparently forgotten all about his parents, Mary was 
earning something as a dressmaker, but not enough to keep 
the family together; so Charles, who longed to lead the life 
of a scholar, turned his back resolutely upon his hopes and 
took a clerkship in a great commercial establishment known as 
the South Sea House. Two years later he secured a similar 
position with the East India Company, another large import- 
ing organization, and this he held for thirty years. 

Sad changes soon came upon the family. First, the old 
employer died, and they had to leave their quiet home in the 
Temple. Then Mary became violently insane and, without 
knowing what she was doing, took her mother's life, and had 
to be sent to an asylum. Not long afterwards the father died, 
after many years of helplessness. 

Through all these troubles Charles worked early and late, 
on a small salary, to provide the little comforts of which the 
family stood in need. Mary at times was quite herself 
again and would come back to live with her brother. Those 
were happy days for both. Mary kept house ; the two spent 
their evenings reading or writing or going to the play together, 
and often entertained their friends, of whom they had many. 
Charles wrote paragraphs and jokes for the Morning Post at 
sixpence each, and after a time he and Mary together published 



134 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

the " Tales from Shakespeare," which are read to-day by- 
hundreds of boys and girls all over the world. A few years 
later Charles wrote the " Adventures of Ulysses." 

Both Charles and Mary had always wanted to get back 
to the Temple, and at last a chance presented itself. Charles 
was now earning enough to provide them with slightly better 
lodgings than those which they were then occupying ; and 
in one of the old Temple courts they found comfortable rooms 
through the windows of which, "when you stand a- tip toe," as 
Charles wrote to Coleridge, they could look out over the 
Thames and the Surrey hills. 

Every Wednesday evening they kept "open house" here 
for their friends, and the greatest writers, painters, and actors 
of the day came to see them. They were still poor, and there 
was no style at these friendly gatherings, but there was good 
fellowship and wit and brilliant conversation ; and Lamb came 
to be known as one of the best talkers in England. Coleridge 
and Southey and Leigh Hunt and Wordsworth — when he 
chanced to be in London — were often at these "Wednesday 
nights" at Charles and Mary Lamb's. There were sad days 
when Mary would have to go back to the asylum, for she was 
never entirely cured, yet their lives were sweetened by a rare 
sympathy and love, and when they were together, between 
the times of Mary's isolation, they were almost as happy as 
if there were no cloud over them. 

When Lamb was fifty years old the East India Company 
gave him his liberty, with a pension which enabled him to 
live comfortably for the rest of his life and to provide for his 
sister. His last and most important writings were the " Essays 
of Elia," a series of familiar letters which he wrote for the 
London Magazine, signing them with the name of an old clerk 
whom he had known in the South Sea House. 

The Lambs had several other homes after living in the 
Temple, their last being at Edmonton, where Charles died 
in 1834. Mary lived thirteen years after her brother's death. 



CHARLES LAMB 135 

THE DISCOVERY OF ROAST PIG 

[From "A Dissertation upon Roast Pig" in "Essays of Elia."] 

" Mankind," says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, "for the 
first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or 
biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia 
to this day." . . . The manuscript goes on to say that the arts 
of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
brother), was accidentally discovered in themanner following. 

The swineherd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one 
morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, 
left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great 10 
lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers 
of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle 
of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration 
over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 
ashes. 15 

Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian mak- 
shif t of a building you may think it) , what was of much more 
importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs no less than 
nine in number perished. China pigs have been esteemed a 
luxury all over the East from the remotest periods that we 20 
read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may 
think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his 
father and he could easily build up again with a few dry 
branches and the labor of an hour or two at any time, as for 
the loss of the pigs. 25 

While he was thinking what he should say to his father, 
and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of 
those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils unlike 
any scent which he had before experienced. What could it 
proceed from ? Not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 30 
that smell before — indeed this was by no means the first 



136 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence 
of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble 
that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory 
moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He 
5 knew not what to think. 

He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any 
signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he 
applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of 
the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his 

10 fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life 
indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted — ■ 
crackling! 

Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him 
so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. 

l 5 The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that 
it was the pig that smelt so and the pig that tasted so delicious ; 
and surrendering himself up to the newborn pleasure, he fell 
to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the 
flesh next it and was cramming it down his throat in his 

20 beastly fashion when his sire entered amid the smoking 
rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs 
stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as 
thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if 
they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced 

25 in his lower regions had rendered him quite callous to any 
inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His 
father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig 
till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little 
more sensible of his situation, something like the following 

30 dialogue ensued. 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? 
Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses 
with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but you must 
be eating fire and I know not what. What have you got 

35 there, I say?" 



CHARLES LAMB 137 

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice 
the burnt pig eats !" 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, 
and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that 
should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully 5 
sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig and 
fairly rending it asunder thrust the lesser half by main force 
into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the 
burnt pig, father! only taste!" — cramming all the while as 
if he would choke. 10 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abomi- 
nable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to 
death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling 
scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying 
the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its 15 
flavor, which — make what sour mouths he would for a 
pretense — proved not altogether displeasing to him. In 
conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious) both 
father and son fairly sat down to the mess and never left off , 
till they had dispatched all that remained of the litter. 20 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a 
couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving 
upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, 
strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's2s 
cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. 
Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would 
break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often 
as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a 
blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, 30 
instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
to him than ever. 

At length they were w,atched, the terrible mystery dis- 
covered, and father and son summoned to take their trial 
at Peking, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence 35 



138 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and 
verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury 
begged that some of the burnt pig of which the culprits stood 
accused might be handed into the box. He handled it, and 
5 they all handled it, and burning their ringers, as Bo-bo and 
his father had done before them, and nature prompting to 
each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts 
and the clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to 
the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, 

10 and all present, — without leaving the box or any manner of 
consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict 
of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest 
iniquity of the decision, and when the court was dismissed 

15 went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for 
love or money. In a few days his Lordship's town house was 
observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there 
was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and 
pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The in- 

20 surance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 
and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science 
of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. 
Thus this custom of firing houses continued till in process of 
time, says my manuscript, a sage arose who made a discovery 

25 that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might 
be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of 
consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the 
rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, 
came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 

30 By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most 
useful and seemingly the most obvious arts make their way 
among mankind. 



CHARLES LAMB 139 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of the life of Charles Lamb. From what is this 
story taken? 2. The " Chinese manuscript" was Lamb's own invention. 
Notice how Addison (page 58) and Irving (page 323) claim to have 
manuscripts containing their stories. 3. What is meant by broiling 
being the " elder brother " of roasting ? 4. Explain " a sorry antediluvian 
makeshift of a building," "smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
sufferers," "assailed his nostrils," "a premonitory moistening . . . 
overflowed his nether lip," "crackling," "retributory cudgel." 

5. What is the effect of introducing trial by jury, reporters, and in- 
surance companies into a story of ancient China? 6. Explain "in- 
considerable assize town," "simultaneous verdict," "winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision." 7. How did these frequent fires 
affect architecture? 

Other essays of Charles Lamb that you may find interesting are 
"Dream Children," "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago," 
"The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," "The Praise of Chimney 
Sweepers." Other books by Lamb are "The Adventures of Ulysses" 
and "Tales from Shakespeare." 

(See the story of "The Tempest," page 26 of this book.) 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 

i 785-1859 

Thomas De Quincey, the English essayist, was the son of a 
prosperous merchant of Manchester and was born in that 
city in 1785, being ten years younger than Lamb. His 
father died when the boy was quite young, and the family then 
lived for some years in the country. When Thomas was about 
eleven they moved again and went to Bath, in the south of 
England, where his mother placed him in the grammar school. 

He proved to be a brilliant scholar, but was not strong in 
body, and lived chiefly among his books and his own thoughts. 
His schoolmates thought him a queer boy. At fifteen he could 
read Greek and, what is more, could speak it fluently. One 
of his teachers said of him, "That boy could harangue an 
Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English 
one." But the praise of his teachers worried his mother. She 
feared it would make him vain, and to spare him from that 
misfortune, she took him out of the Bath Grammar School and 
sent him to a very inferior school in Wiltshire, where she 
thought the teacher would not flatter him. 

At fifteen he was ready to enter Oxford, but his family 
wished him to go first to the Manchester Grammar School, 
where by studying three years he could earn a scholarship 
that would pay his expenses at the university. He began 
his work at Manchester, but he had already completed 
most of the studies offered there, and they now seemed very 
childish to him. At last the work grew so distasteful that he 
decided to give up all his plans for a college education and go 
out to "see the world." 

140 



142 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

He began by taking a walking journey through Wales, 
his family allowing him a guinea a week for expenses. For 
some reason — perhaps it was pride — ■ after he had got 
away from home he did not ask for his guinea a week. In- 
stead, he made his way like a common tramp, and in time 
found himself in London. There, after suffering great hard- 
ships, he was found by his friends and taken home. He was 
then sent to Oxford and spent nearly four years there, but 
just as he was ready to take his degree he disappeared again. 

At about this time he became acquainted with Words- 
worth and Coleridge. He had already met Lamb in London. 
His admiration for Wordsworth was so great that he followed 
him into the Lake Region and for ten years lived in Dove 
Cottage, near Grasmere — the house which had been Words- 
worth's first home in that region. 

Here he married and settled down to the life of a literary 
man. Most of his essays were written for magazines, but a 
few years before his death they were published in book form. 
His later years were spent near Edinburgh. 

When a young man he had been subject to severe attacks of 
neuralgia, and to ease the pain he had taken opium. The 
opium habit grew upon him, and his whole life became a 
struggle to free himself from it. His best-known book is 
" Confessions of an English Opium Eater." Among his best 
essays are "The English Mail-Coach," "Joan of Arc," and 
"The Revolt of the Tartars." 



A NIGHT ON THE MAIL-COACH 

[This selection is abridged from De Quincey's essay "The English 
Mail-Coach," which was written in 1849.] 

The mail recommenced its journey northwards about 
midnight. Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy 
hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 143 

sake of fresh air, meaning to fall in with the mail and resume 
my seat at the post office. The night, however, being yet 
dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being 
at that hour empty, so as to offer no opportunities for asking 
the road, I lost my way and did not reach the post office until 5 
it was considerably past midnight ; but to my great relief 
(as it was important for me to be in Westmoreland by the 
morning), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing 
through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was not yet 
lost. Past the time it was, but by some rare accident the 10 
mail was not even yet ready to start. 

Having mounted the box, my attention was drawn to the 
fact that the coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and 
that he had but one eye. These personal distinctions iden- 
tified in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had known 15 
in the south for some years as the most masterly of mail 
coachmen. Great joy was at our meeting. But what was 
Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended 
northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as 
he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit 20 
at law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he had 
got himself transferred to this station for the purpose of 
connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness 
for the calls of his lawsuit. 

Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we have 25 
now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail 
and this procrastinating post office ! What are they about ? 
The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of 
foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by 
war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service. But at 30 
last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard! Manchester, 
good-by ! Off we are at last ! 

From Manchester to Kendal there were at this time seven 
stages of eleven miles each. The first three stages terminate 
in Preston. During the first stage I found out that Cyclops 35 



144 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

was mortal ; he was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — 
a thing which previously I had never suspected. If a man 
indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in auri- 
gation of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to execute 

5 his notions, avails him nothing. " Oh, Cyclops ! " I exclaimed, 
"thou art mortal. My friend, thou snorest!" 

Through the first eleven miles, however, this infirmity 
betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On waking up he 
made an apology for himself which, instead of mending 

10 matters, laid open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The 
summer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
Lancaster, in consequence of which for three nights and three 
days he had not lain down on a bed. During the day he 
was waiting for his own summons as a witness on the trial in 

15 which he was interested. During the night, or that part of it 
which at sea would form the middle watch, he was driving. 
This explanation certainly accounted for his drowsiness, 
but in a way which made it much more alarming ; since now, 
after several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was 

20 steadily giving way. 

Throughout the second stage he grew more and more 
drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage he surrendered 
himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous tempta- 
tion. All his past resistance had but deepened the weight of 

25 this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon 
him ; and to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after 
singing "Love amongst the Roses" for perhaps thirty times, 
without invitation and without applause, had in revenge 
moodily resigned himself to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, 

30 as the coachman's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus 
at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about that 
I found myself left in charge of his Majesty's London and 
Glasgow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. 
The usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road. 

35 Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 145 

this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it 
happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity 
and peace. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the 
sea; which also must, under the present circumstances, be 
repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, 5 
the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in 
this universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid tremblings 
of the dawn were by this time blending ; and the blendings 
were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a 
slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the 10 
woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. 
Except the feet of our own horses, — which, running on a 
sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance, — • 
there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on the earth 
prevailed the same majestic peace. 15 

Suddenly I was awakened to a sullen sound, as of some mo- 
tion on the distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment ; 
I listened in awe ; but then it died away. Once roused, how- 
ever, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion 
of our horses. It was not that I feared for ourselves. Us 20 
our bulk and impetus charmed against peril in any collision. 
But any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light 
in comparison of ourselves. 

What could be done — who was it that could do it — to 
check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not 25 
seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman? 
You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to do 
so ; and I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself ; but 
from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced be- 
tween his upper and lower thigh this was impossible. 30 

The sounds ahead strengthened and were now too clearly 
the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be? Was it 
industry in a taxed cart? Was it youthful gayety in a gig? 
Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced? Whoever 
were the travelers, something must be done to warn them. 35 



146 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

Might I not sound the guard's horn? Already, on the first 
thought, I was making my way over the roof to the guard's 
seat. But this, from the foreign mails being piled upon the 
roof, was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one 
5 cramped by nearly three hundred miles of outside traveling. 
And fortunately, before I had lost much time in the attempt, 
our frantic horses swept round an angle of the road which 
opened upon us that final stage where the collision must be 
accomplished and the catastrophe sealed. 

10 Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred 
yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous trees, which 
rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high overhead, 
gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These trees 
lent a deeper solemnity to the early light ; but there was still 

is light enough to perceive, at the further end of this Gothic 
aisle, a frail, reedy gig, in which were seated a young man 
and by his side a young lady. The little carriage is creeping 
on, and the parties within it are bending down their heads. I 
shouted — and the young man heard me not. A second time 

20 1 shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could be done ; 

more on my part was not possible. Mine had been the first 

step ; the second was for the young man ; the third was for 

God. If, said I, this stranger is a brave man, or if he feels the 

25 obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to be called a 
man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his pro- 
tection — he will at least make some effort to save her. 

He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was 
coming down ; already its gloomy shadow darkened above 

30 him, and already he was measuring his strength to deal with 
it. Suddenly he rose, stood upright, and by a powerful strain 
upon the reins, raising his horse's forefeet from the ground, 
he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind legs, so as to 
plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles 

35 to ours. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 147 

Thus far his condition was not improved, except as a first 
step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If 
no more were done, nothing was done ; for the little carriage 
still occupied the very center of our path, though in an altered 
direction. Yet even now it may not be too late. One al- 5 
mighty bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, then, 
hurry ! for the flying moments — they hurry. Oh, hurry, 
hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses 

— they also hurry ! 

One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the 10 
stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act 
of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's forefeet upon 
the crown or arching center of the road. The larger half of the 
little equipage had then cleared our overtowering shadow; 
that was evident even to my own agitated sight. But the 15 
rear part of the carriage — was that certainly beyond the line 
of absolute ruin? What power could answer the question? 

Faster than ever millrace we ran past them in our inexorable 
flight. Oh, raving of hurricanes that must have sounded 
in their young ears at the moment of our transit ! Even in 20 
that moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either 
with the swinglebar or with the haunch of our near leader 
we had struck the off-wheel of the little gig, which stood rather 
obliquely and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately 
parallel with the near-wheel. The blow, from the fury 25 
of our passage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror to gaze 
upon the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated 
station I looked down and looked back upon the scene ; which 
in a moment told its own tale. 

The horse was planted immovably, with his forefeet upon 30 
the paved crest of the central road. The little cany carriage, 

— partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels 
in its recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we 
had given to it, — as if it sympathized with human horror, 
was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The young man 35 



148 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

trembled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his 
was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror. As 
yet he dared not to look round; for he knew that, if any- 
thing remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. 

5 The moments were numbered ; the strife was finished ; the 
vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye our flying 
horses had carried us to the termination of the umbrageous 
aisle ; at the right angles we wheeled into our former direction ; 
the turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an 
10 instant and swept it into my dreams forever. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of De Quincey's life. 2. Describe briefly a stage- 
coach of the type referred to in this selection. 3. Explain "in point of 
bulk," "personal distinctions," "identified." 4. Why did De Quincey 
call the driver Cyclops? 5. Explain the reference to Apollo and the 
horses of Aurora. What is " skill in aurigation " ? 6. Explain " a gloomy 
vista of coming disasters," "summer assizes," "seven atmospheres of 
sleep rested upon him." (An atmosphere means in scientific language 
the weight or pressure of the air at the level of the sea. Seven atmos- 
pheres would be seven times this.) 

7. Explain "halcyon repose" (see Vocabulary). 8. What is meant 
by the sea, the atmosphere, and the light each bearing "an orchestral 
part in this universal lull"? (This beautiful description likens the 
scene of the early dawn to music ; each object is like an instrument, all 
blending into perfect harmony.) 9. Explain "equable transparency," 
"Was it industry in a taxed cart?" (There was a tax on market carts 
in England.) 10. What touch of feeling is given to the description by 
likening the place of the collision to a cathedral aisle? 11. What 
is a gig ? 

12. What figures of speech are found in the words "was all alive with 
tremblings and shiverings," page 147, line 35? 13. Explain "torsion." 
14. Compare the description of the collision with a modern newspaper ac- 
count of some fatal accident. Which seems to you the stronger ? Why ? 

Another selection from "The English Mail-Coach" — one which 
illustrates De Quincey's humor — is the description of the state coach 
presented to the emperor of China, and how he used it. 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 

1788-1824 

Byron was a man who was always unhappy because he 
was always thinking of himself. Wherever he looked, he 
seemed to see his own reflection. 

He was unfortunate, to begin with, in not having good 
parents. His father was of an ancient and aristocratic 
family, but had squandered all that belonged to him and 
lived so wild and reckless a life that his comrades called 
him "Mad Jack." His mother was a weak and silly woman, 
whom his father married for her money and whom he left 
as soon as he had spent it. George Gordon was born in 
London in 1788. The American Revolution had then been 
fought and won, and the French Revolution was about to 
begin. The spirit of revolt was in the very air. It was a 
time when authority of every kind was being questioned, and 
Byron's life was a continual rebellion. 

Soon after the boy's birth his father ran away to France 
and died in that country. The mother then took George 
up to Aberdeen, in Scotland, where she lived as well as she 
could upon the little money that was left her, until George 
was ten years old. At that time his great-uncle, the fifth 
Lord Byron, died, and as he had no children of his own, the 
title and estate descended to young George, who was his 
nearest kin and who thus became the sixth Lord Byron and 
master of the broad lands and mansion of Newstead Abbey, 
near Nottingham, in Sherwood Forest. 

At thirteen he was sent to school at Harrow. He was a 
proud and passionate boy, and for a time did not get along 

149 



150 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

very well with his schoolmates. He had a handsome face 
but a lame foot, and he was very sensitive about the latter. 
Yet, in spite of his lameness, he was a good cricket player, 
swimmer, and boxer, and was generally in a fight with some 
one. He would rather fight than do anything else in the 
world. 

From Harrow he went at seventeen to Cambridge. Here 
he gave more attention to shooting, boxing, and riding than 
to his studies, and was so idle that it is hard to understand 
how he ever got through. At college he published his first 
volume of poems, called " Hours of Idleness" (which, by the 
way, was a most appropriate title), but it attracted no atten- 
tion except from a Scotch literary paper, the Edinburgh 
Review, which made great fun of it. Byron replied with a 
poem called " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," which 
made fun of the Review and which brought him into notice — ■ 
and that was just what he wanted. 

After leaving Cambridge he traveled through southern 
Europe as far as Greece and Turkey, and wrote the first 
two parts, or cantos, of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Then 
he returned to London, published his poem, and was at once 
hailed as a great poet. "I awoke one morning," he said, 
"and found myself famous." Scott and Tom Moore, the 
Irish poet, became his warm friends. He was invited to 
countless receptions, balls, and parties. People imitated his 
melancholy manner, his speech, and even his dress. In the 
midst of this flattery he married a wealthy and beautiful 
young woman and entered Parliament ; but his successes 
turned his head, he grew dissipated, and within a year his 
young wife had to leave him, taking with her their child, a 
baby girl. 

Those who had honored him now turned against him, 
and he became so unpopular that he had to leave England. 
He wandered again through southern Europe. In Italy he 
engaged in several revolutionary plots and was much with 



152 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

Shelley, whose life you will read a few pages farther on in this 
book. Leigh Hunt also joined them for a time. During 
these years Byron kept on writing poetry, completing " Childe 
Harold's Pilgrimage" and producing "The Prisoner of 
Chillon," "Mazeppa," and several other poems. 

In 1824, after eight years of this wandering life, Byron 
became interested in the struggle of the Greeks to free them- 
selves from Turkey and threw himself into the fight with his 
whole soul. It was the sort of thing he loved, and in it he 
showed more strength of character than he had ever shown 
before. He was made leader of the Greek forces and pre- 
pared for a great battle against the Turks, but just as he was 
about to make his attack he was seized with a fever and died 
a few days later. 

THE NIGHT BEFORE WATERLOO 

[This selection is taken from the third canto of "Childe Harold's 
Pilgrimage." The revelry described in the first stanza was a ball given 
to the English officers in Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond, on the 
night of June 15, 181 5. The English army under the Duke of Wellington 
was encamped just outside the city, awaiting an attack by the French 
under Napoleon. Napoleon, thinking that the English were off their 
guard, fell upon them suddenly that night. The battle which followed 
was really two battles — the first known as the battle of Quatre Bras, and 
the second, two days later, as the battle of Waterloo. Supporting the 
English army were the armies of the Netherlands, Belgium, Prussia, 
and others of the German states, the last-named under Marshal Bliicher. 
Napoleon's power was crushed, and he was soon after made prisoner. 

Lady de Ros, daughter of the Duchess of Richmond, in her "Personal 
Recollections" says of the ball : 

When the Duke of Wellington arrived, rather late, I was dancing, but at 
once went up to him to ask about the rumors. He said very gravely, "Yes, 
they are true; we are off to-morrow." This terrible news was circulated 
directly, and while some of the officers hurried away, others remained at the 
ball and actually had not time to change their clothes, but fought in evening 
costume. 

I went with my oldest brother to his house, which stood in our garden, to 
help him pack up, after which we returned to the ballroom, where we found 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 153 

some energetic and heartless ladies still dancing. It was a dreadful evening, 
taking leave of friends and acquaintances, many never to be seen again. The 
Duke of Brunswick, as he took leave of me in the anteroom adjoining the ball- 
room, made me a civil speech as to the Brunswickers being sure to distinguish 
themselves. I remember being quite provoked at Lord Hay for his delight 
at the idea of going into action; and the first news we had on the sixteenth 
was that he and the Duke of Brunswick were killed. At the ball supper I sat 
next to the Duke of Wellington. In the course of the evening the duke asked 
my father for a map of the country. He put his finger on Waterloo, saying 
the battle would be fought there. 

Thackeray also describes scenes in Brussels at this time, in the twenty- 
ninth and thirty-first chapters of "Vanity Fair."] 

There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 5 

Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell ; 
But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell ! 

Did ye not hear it ? No ; 't was but the wind, 10 

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 
On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ; 
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet 
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet. 
But hark ! that heavy sound breaks in once more, 15 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 
Arm ! arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar ! 

Within a windowed niche of that high hall 

Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain ; he did hear 2 ° 

That sound the first amidst the festival, 

And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear ; 

And when they smiled because he deemed it near, 



154 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

His heart more truly knew that peal too well 
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, 
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell. 
He rushed into the field, and foremost fighting, fell. 

5 Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 

10 The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated ; who could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise ! 

And there was mounting in hot haste ; the steed, 
15 The mustering squadron, and the clattering car 

Went pouring forward with impetuous speed 

And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 

And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ; 

And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
20 Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ; 

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering with white lips — "The foe ! They come ! they 
come!" 

And wild and high the "Cameron's Gathering" rose, 
The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills 

25 Have heard ; and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : — 
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, 
Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which fills 
Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers 
With the fierce native daring which instills 

30 The stirring memory of a thousand years, 

And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears! 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 155 

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, 
Dewy with Nature's teardrops, as they pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 
Over the unreturning brave, — alas ! 

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 5 

Which now beneath them, but above shall grow 
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of living valor, rolling on the foe 
And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low. 

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, IO 

Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, 
The morn the marshaling in arms, — the day 
Battle's magnificently stern array ! 

The thunderclouds close o'er it, which when rent J 5 

The earth is covered thick with other clay, 
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, 
Rider and horse — friend, foe — in one red burial blent ! 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Byron's life. 2. Name three of his poems. 
From which is this selection taken? 3. Tell something of the battle 
of Waterloo. Between whom was it fought ; when and where was it ; 
what did it decide? 4. Describe the picture in the first two stanzas. 
What immediately followed ? (The strength and interest of the poem 
lie largely in the contrast between these two scenes, and in the sudden 
change from gayety to fear and death.) 5. Put into simple prose 
"Belgium's capital had gathered then her Beauty and her Chivalry," 
" Music arose with its voluptuous swell." 6. What is a " rising knell " ? 

7. Explain "let joy be unconfined," "to chase the glowing Hours 
with flying feet." 8. Who was "Brunswick's fated chieftain," and 
how fated? o. What is meant by "Death's prophetic ear"? 10. What 
do you learn about Brunswick's father in the third stanza? (He was 
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick and had been killed by the French at 
Jena, nine years before.) 11. What was the deep thunder (page 154, 



156 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

line 18) ? The " Cameron's Gathering" was the war call of the Cameron 
clan of Scotch Highlanders. Who was Lochiel, and what are "Albyn's 
hills"? 12. What is "the noon of night"? Describe the pibroch. 
13. "Evan's, Donald's fame," refers to Evan Cameron and his grandson 
Donald, both famous chiefs. How would their memory affect their 
clansmen ? 

14. What is Ardennes? Explain "dewy with Nature's teardrops," 
and why "teardrops"? 15. Explain "Which now beneath them, but 
above shall grow in its next verdure," "fiery mass of living valor," "The 
thunderclouds close o'er it," "covered thick with other clay, which her 
own clay shall cover." 16. Memorize lines or stanzas that you par- 
ticularly like. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB 

[This poem describes the closing event in the expedition of Sennacherib, 
king of Assyria, against the Jews under King Hezekiah, in the seventh 
century B.C. Sennacherib was one of the great warriors of ancient times. 
He reigned from 705 to 681 B.C. and conquered the neighboring nations. 
In this expedition against the Jews he took forty-six fortified cities and 
more than two hundred thousand captives, and shut up Hezekiah in 
Jerusalem, "like a bird in a cage," as he says in one of his inscriptions, 
" building towers round the city to hem him in and raising banks of 
earth against the gates so as to prevent escape." Hezekiah was obliged 
to pay a heavy tribute, giving Sennacherib all the silver that was in the 
temple and the palace, and cutting off the gold from the doors and pillars. 
Having exhausted his treasure, he went to Isaiah the prophet and be- 
sought him to pray for help. And Isaiah replied, "Thus saith Jehovah : 
'Be not afraid. ... He [the king of Assyria] shall hear tidings and 
shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword 
in his own land.' " 

Almost immediately after this message Sennacherib was called away 
by the news that other enemies were rising against him ; and the soldiers 
were withdrawn, but with the threat that they should come again. 

This threat disturbed Hezekiah, and he went into the temple and 
prayed to Jehovah. In response, word was sent to him again through 
Isaiah the prophet, "Thus saith Jehovah concerning the king of Assyria : 
he shall not come unto this city nor shoot an arrow there, neither shall 
he come before it with shield nor cast up a mound against it." 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 157 

What followed is told in 2 Kings xix, 35-37 : "And -it came to pass 
that night, that the angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp 
of the Assyrians a hundred fourscore and five thousand : and when men 
arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. So 
Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt 
at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the house of 
Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer smote him with the 
sword." See also Isaiah xxxvi, xxxvii.] 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; 
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
When the blue waVe rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 5 

That host with their banners at sunset were seen : 
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, 
That host on the morrow *lay withered and strown. 

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, 
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 10 

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still ! 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
But through it there roUed not the breath of his pride ; 
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, I5 

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, 

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail : 

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. 20 

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, 
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal ; 
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! 



158 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. What historical event does this poem describe? Tell what you can 
about it. Why do we say "from 705 to 681 B.C.," instead of "from 
681 to 705 B.C.," line 16, page 156? 2. What two similes are found in 
the first stanza? in the second? Explain them. 3. Notice that the 
poem presents two pictures — before the plague and after it. In what 
line does the second begin? 4. Notice the fine metaphor in the third 
stanza. W T hat was the Angel of Death ? 

5. Explain "the widows of Ashur." (Ashur, the name of the national 
god of Assyria, is here used for the country itself.) 6. Broke and smote 
were formerly proper past participles of break and smite. What forms 
are now used instead? 7. Explain "the idok are broke." W T ho was 
Baal? 8. What Gentile is referred to here? Explain the last two 
lines. 9. What lesson do you think this poem teaches? 10. Memorize 
the poem. 

Byron's "Vision of Belshazzar" and the Biblical account in the fifth 
chapter of Daniel give another instance of pride humbled by Divine 
Power. 

SOLITUDE 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society where none intrudes, 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

From " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto IV 

Other poems of Byron which may be read at this time are "The 
Isles of Greece," portions of "The Prisoner of Chillon," and " Mazeppa " ; 
also "The Ocean," and "The Gladiator" from "Childe Harold's Pil- 
grimage." A stirring poem upon the Greek revolution is Fitz-Greene 
Halleck's "Marco Bozzaris." 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

1792-1822 

In 1792, when Byron was a child of four years, in Aber- 
deen, and Wordsworth and Coleridge were young men taking 
tramps together and writing poetry in the south of England, 
and Scott was beginning to practice law in Edinburgh, and 
Burns was chasing smugglers and collecting duties on the 
Border, another was born into the great company of English 
poets. The newcomer was Shelley. 

Shelley was the son of a country gentleman, afterwards 
a baronet, who lived at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex. 
He was the eldest of six children, and we are told that when 
a boy, he used to entertain his sisters with marvelous tales 
of goblins and strange animals that he said inhabited their 
garden, and of a dragon in a neighboring wood, also of 
an alchemist with a long gray beard, who was supposed to 
dwell in an abandoned room of the old house. He liked to 
go out at night and walk among the trees. In one of his 
poems he says : 

While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts and sped 
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 

The boy was first taught by a tutor and began to study 
Latin when he was six years old. Then he went to a school 
kept by an old Scotchman, who did quite as much flogging 
as teaching. It was a horrible place, and the boy was thank- 
ful when his father took him away and sent him to Eton. 

159 



160 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

The big boys at Eton tried to bully him, but he fought them 
with the utmost boldness and banded all the smaller boys 
together to resist their tyranny. It was here that he began to 
show that spirit of rebellion against authority which marked 
him all through life and which was characteristic of the times 
in which he lived. We have seen how strong it was in Byron. 
While at Eton, Shelley, then about sixteen, wrote a story, 
which he sold for forty pounds. With his sister, he also pub- 
lished a book of poems. He read eagerly and almost con- 
stantly, but did not apply himself closely to his studies. 

After finishing his preparatory work at Eton, Shelley 
went to Oxford. Here he wrote a rebellious pamphlet which 
got him into trouble and made it necessary for him to leave 
college. This was his first serious mistake. 

He went to London. While there he frequently visited 
his sisters, who were at a neighboring school, and he became 
so interested in one of their schoolgirl friends that he ran away 
with her and married her. This was another mistake. They 
were very young and were not at all suited to each other ; and 
after three years they separated. Several years later he ran 
away with another young woman. 

At twenty-six he left England never to return. He took 
his wife with him and lived for a time in Naples, in Rome, 
in Leghorn, and in Pisa. Pisa was especially attractive to 
him. There, in that quiet old city, he had nothing to fight 
against and nothing to disturb him. He and Mrs. Shelley 
made a home there, and there he did his best work. While 
in Italy he frequently saw Byron. It was in Byron's villa 
at Este that he began his drama " Prometheus L T nbound." 
At about the same time, or shortly after, Keats, another 
brilliant young English poet, died in Rome. Shelley, who 
admired him greatly, wrote a dirge or elegy called " Adonais," 
which is one of his best works. In 1822 Shelley and his wife 
went with some friends to Lerici, near Spezia, on the east coast 
of Italy. He had planned with Byron to establish a magazine, 



162 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

for which both poets should write and which Leigh Hunt 
should edit. They had sent to London for Hunt, and when 
Hunt and his family arrived at Leghorn, Shelley sailed down 
the coast from Spezia in a little boat to meet and welcome 
him. On his return a violent thunderstorm came up and 
wrecked the boat. Shelley was drowned. His body was 
found and burned, as he had wished it should be. The ashes 
were buried in the little Protestant cemetery in Rome near 
the grave of Keats. 

Aside from the poems already mentioned, Shelley's finest 
verses are perhaps his short lyrics "The Cloud," "To a Sky- 
lark," and "Ode to the West Wind." 



THE CLOUD 

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

From the seas and the streams ; 
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams ; 
5 From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 
10 And whiten the green plains under ; 

And then again I dissolve it in rain, 

And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
And their great pines groan aghast ; 
15 And all the night 't is my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 

Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers, 
Lightning, my pilot, sits ; 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 163 

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, — 

It struggles and howls at fits ; 
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the genii that move 5 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills and the crags and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains, 
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 

The spirit he loves remains ; 10 

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 15 

When the morning star shines dead ; 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle, alit, one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 20 

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, 

Its ardors of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest 25 

As still as a brooding dove. 

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 

Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleecelike floor, 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 3° 

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 

The stars peep behind her and peer ; 



1 64 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
5 Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 

Are each paved with the moon and these. 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 
10 When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 

From cape to cape, with a bridgelike shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 
The mountains its columns be. 
15 The triumphal arch through which I march 
With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, 

Is the million-colored bow ; 
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, 
20 While the moist earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water, 

And the nursling of the sky ; 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 
25 For after the rain, when with never a stain 

The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams 

Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 
30 And out of the caverns of rain, 

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 

I arise and unbuild it again. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 165 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Shelley's life. 2. Explain how a cloud is 
made. 3. Give examples of personification in the first stanza. 4. Who is 
called the mother of the buds, and how does she dance about the sun ? 
5. Explain the metaphor in "I wield the flail of the lashing hail." 6. To 
what is the lightning likened in the second stanza? the thunder? 
7. Lightning, the pilot, is supposed to be guiding the cloud onward to 
find the genii or spirits of the earth and sea — perhaps magnetic forces. 
The lightning is attracted to these spirits and tries to find them wherever 
he dreams they are. Explain how the cloud can "bask in heaven's 
blue smile" while the lightning below is "dissolving in rains." 

8. What is meant by the "sanguine sunrise"? What are the 
"meteor eyes" and "burning plumes" of the sunrise? Notice this 
figure of the sunrise leaping upon the back of the cloud. If you have 
ever seen the morning sunlight just touching a cloud, you will feel the 
beauty of the comparison. 9. What does "rack" mean, as here used? 
Why is the morning star spoken of as shining dead? 10. Explain the 
comparison beginning with line 17, page 163. Is it a simile or meta- 
phor? 11. Explain "the lit sea." Why is "ardors" used in referring 
to the sunset? 

12. Explain "the crimson pall of eve." Where is the "airy nest" 
of the cloud, and in what ways is a cloud like a brooding dove ? 13. Who 
is "the orbed maiden"? Define "orbed." 14. The top of a cloud, 
as seen from a mountain or a balloon, seems level like a floor. Give the 
poet's explanation of the breaks or openings in the cloud at night. Think 
of these lines when you see the moon shining through a cloud. 15. What 
seems like a swarm of golden bees? 16. Why are the rivers, lakes, and 
seas like strips of the sky ? What is meant by "paved with the moon " ? 

17. Explain lines 7-10, page 164. (The volcanoes seem dim in com- 
parison with the brightness of the cloud when the sun shines on it ; and 
the stars seem to reel when the moon shines on it and the whirlwinds 
blow it along.) 18. Explain "sunbeam-proof." What seem to be the 
columns that support the roof of the sky? 19. WTiat is the arch in 
line 15, page 164? Explain "When the powers of the air are chained 
to my chair." 20. What is "the sphere-fire above"? 

21. Explain why the cloud is called "the daughter of earth and 
water, and the nursling of the sky." Explain "I change, but I cannot 
die." 22. Explain "when, with never a stain, the pavilion of heaven 
is bare." Why is heaven called a pavilion? Compare this with "blue 



1 66 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

dome," line 28. Which do you like the better? 23. What does "con- 
vex" mean? 24. What is a cenotaph? What is the cenotaph of the 
cloud? Why does the cloud laugh, and how does it "arise and unbuild 
it again"? 25. Select what you think are the finest lines in the poem. 
26. Find all the similes and metaphors. 27. Memorize the stanzas 
that you like best. 

TO A SKYLARK 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
5 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest 

Like a cloud of fire ; 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
10 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run, 
15 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven 
In the broad daylight 
20 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 

Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere 
Whose intense lamp narrows 

In the white dawn clear, 
2 5 Until we hardly see. we feel that it is there. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 167 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 

From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 5 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 10 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 15 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 

Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : 20 

Like a glowworm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view : 25 

Like a rose embowered 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflowered, 

Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. 30 



i68 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass. 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
5 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine ; 
I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
10 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine : 

Chorus hymenaeal, 

Or triumphal chaunt, 
Matched with thine, would be all 

But an empty vaunt, 
15 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains? 

What shapes of sky or plain ? 
20 What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be ; 
Shadow of annoyance 

Never came near thee : 
25 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 

Than we mortals dream, 
30 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 






PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 169 

We look before and after 

And pine for what is not ; 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 5 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
If we were things born 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 10 

Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 15 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 

From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then — as I am listening now. 20 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Find out what you can about the European skylark. What pecu- 
liarities has it? 2. Explain "profuse strains of unpremeditated art," 
"unbodied joy." 3. Explain "Whose intense lamp narrows," in the 
fifth stanza. 4. What are the heavy-winged thieves, line 30, page 167 ? 
Explain "vernal showers." 5. What is the subject of "surpass," line 5, 
page 168? Reread the stanza, giving the words their prose order. 

6. Explain "chorus hymenaeal," " the fountains of thy happy strain," 
"satiety." 7. Explain the stanza beginning "Waking or asleep." 8. In 
line 1, page 169, we is contrasted with the skylark — we pine, but the 
skylark does not. 9. What is the skill of the skylark for which the poet 
longs (line 15)? 10. Explain all the similes and metaphors. 11. Mem- 
orize stanzas that you like, at least the first four and the last. 



JOHN KEATS 
i 795-1821 

The last of the group of English poets who made the 
beginning of the nineteenth century ever memorable was 
John Keats. His life was short (he was little more than 
twenty-five when he died), yet in the few years before his 
death he wrote some of the most perfect and beautiful poetry 
that we shall ever find. 

Keats was three years younger than Shelley, having been 
born in 1795. He had the same high poetic spirit and love 
for the beautiful that Shelley had, but he came from a very 
different home, for he was the son of a stable keeper and was 
born over the stable of a London inn. You may think that 
a strange birthplace for a great poet, but it doesn't matter 
much what one's surroundings are if one is made of the 
right sort of stuff and is determined to do something worth 
while. 

Keats's father was not poor. He had worked hard and 
by his prudence and industry had become manager of the 
stable, had married his master's daughter, and had been 
able to lay aside enough to educate his four children. John, 
the oldest of the family, was sent to school at Enfield, where 
he studied and played as most boys do, and did not distinguish 
himself for anything in particular unless it was for his kindness 
and good-nature. He was small for his age, but was broad- 
shouldered and vigorous. 

Troubles came upon him early. His father was killed 
by a fall from a horse, his mother died a few years later, 
and at fifteen John was taken from school by his guardian and 
apprenticed to a physician at Edmonton. 

170 



1 72 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

He found time in the midst of his medical studies for some 
reading, and often walked over to Enfield to see Cowden 
Clarke, the son of his old schoolmaster, with whom he had kept 
up a warm friendship. Young Clarke was fond of literature, 
and on one of these visits lent Keats a copy of Spenser's 
" Fairy Queen." The reading of this book inspired the young 
poet to write. His first poems were imitations of Spenser, 
and were rich with beautiful forms and gorgeous color, but 
irregular and crude. Something else was needed to perfect 
his style, and that came at last through his discovery of 
Homer. One evening, as he was visiting young Clarke, the 
latter took down from a shelf Chapman's translation of the 
great poet, and the two began to read it together. Keats 
knew nothing of Greek, but this translation opened a new 
world to him. As they read he became so excited that at 
times he shouted for very joy. They read on without any 
thought of time, until day broke in the east. 

Keats walked home in the early dawn with a strange new 
feeling in his heart, and a few days later he sent Clarke his 
sonnet, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." From 
that time forth he felt that poetry was to be his life work. 
He continued his medical studies and for two years was an 
assistant in a London hospital, but he had lost interest in 
medicine. It was at about this time that he said to a friend, 
"The other day during a lecture there came a sunbeam into 
the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in 
the ray ; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland." 

In London Keats became acquainted with Shelley and Leigh 
Hunt. Hunt, who was at that time publishing a paper, The 
Examiner, printed several of Keats's sonnets. A little later, 
in 1817, he helped Keats to bring out a small volume of 
poems, but the book attracted no attention and did not sell. 
Yet Keats was not discouraged. He knew that he could do 
better, and about a year later he published a longer poem, 
"Endymion," which told the story of the Greek youth who 



JOHN KEATS 173 

was loved by the Moon. The magazines made fun of it, and 
Keats, disappointed but not discouraged, determined to make 
his next still better. 

About this time one of his brothers became very ill. Keats 
took care of him and wore himself out with nursing. The 
brother died, and Keats, thinking to get a little rest and 
change, took a tramp through the Lake Country and into 
Scotland. He became overtired, was drenched with rain, 
took a severe cold, and came back with consumption fastened 
upon him. He was then but twenty-three. 

During the next three years, with steadily failing health, 
Keats did his best work. "The Eve of St. Agnes," "On a 
Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale," "Lamia," and the beauti- 
ful fragment called "Hyperion" were written during that 
time. The book which contained these poems was published 
in 1820 and brought its author fame, but he was then beyond 
caring for that. In the autumn of the same year he went to 
Rome, thinking that the milder climate might lengthen his 
life, but he died during the following February, and was 
buried in the little Protestant cemetery just within the city 
wall. He asked that upon his tombstone should be placed 
the words, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." 
The words were placed there, as he wished, but they did not 
prevent him from becoming famous. 

ROBIN HOOD 

No ! those days are gone away, 
And their hours are old and gray, 
And their minutes buried* all 
Under the down-trodden pall 
Of the leaves of many years : 
Many times have Winter's shears, 
Frozen North, and chilling East, 
Sounded tempests to the feast 



i 7 4 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

Of the forest's whispering fleeces, 
Since men knew nor rent nor leases. 



No, the bugle sounds no more, 
And the twanging bow no more ; 

5 Silent is the ivory shrill 

Past the heath and up the hill ; 
There is no mid-forest laugh, 
Where lone Echo gives the half 
To some wight, amazed to hear 

10 Jesting, deep in forest drear. 

On the fairest time of June 
You may go, with sun or moon, 
Or the seven stars to light you, 
Or the polar ray to right you ; 

15 But you never may behold 

Little John, or Robin bold ; 
Never one, of all the clan, 
Thrumming on an empty can 
Some old hunting ditty, while 

20 He doth his green way beguile 

To fair hostess Merriment, 
Down beside the pasture Trent ; 
For he left the merry tale, 
Messenger for spicy ale. 

25 Gone, the merry morris din ; 

Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; 
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw 
Idling in the "grene shawe" ; 
All are gone away and past ! 

30 And if Robin should be cast 

Sudden from his turfed grave, 
And if Marian should have 



JOHN KEATS 175 

Once again her forest days, 

She would weep, and he would craze : 

He would swear, for all his oaks, 

Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, 

Have rotted on the briny seas ; 5 

She would weep that her wild bees 

Sang not to her — strange ! that honey 

Can't be got without hard money ! 

So it is : yet let us sing 
Honor to the old bowstring ! IO 

Honor to the bugle horn ! 
Honor to the woods unshorn ! 
Honor to the Lincoln green ! 
Honor to the archer keen ! 

Honor to tight Little John, x 5 

And the horse he rode upon ! 
Honor to bold Robin Hood, 
Sleeping in the underwood ! 
Honor to Maid Marian, 

And to all the Sherwood clan ! 20 

Though their days have hurried by, 
Let us two a burden try. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of the life of Keats. 2. Tell who Robin Hood 
was, and how and where he lived. 3. What days are spoken of in the 
first line ? Explain "buried all under the down-trodden pall of the leaves 
of many years." 4. Explain the five lines beginning with line 31, page 
173. (The North and the East are spoken of as "Winter's shears" 
because their winds are so sharp and because they cut down between 
them all the grass and flowers. Tempests have been sounded to the 
feast of only the "forest's whispering fleeces" — that is, of the driving 
snow — since those days when the forest was free and when men did not 
have to pay rent or make leases for it.) 



176 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

5. Explain "Silent is the ivory shrill" (ivory whistle). What is a 
heath? 6. Explain lines 7-10, page 174. (No laugh is now to be heard 
in the midst of the forest, as in Robin Hood's time, when often some 
traveler would hear the echo of talking and jesting. The echo would 
give him only half of the jest or the last words of it.) 7. What are 
the seven stars? the polar ray? a ditty? 8. Who was Little John? 
9. Explain lines 15-24, page 174. (You cannot now see one of Robin 
Hood's men thrumming on an empty can, down beside the river Trent, 
where, after having left the crowd with their merry tales, to get some ale 
at a neighboring town, he stops awhile and thus beguiles or enlivens 
his way through the green forest to the place where Merriment is hostess ; 
that is, to the village tavern.) 

10. Explain "merry morris din" (see Vocabulary)- «. What was 
the song of Gamelyn? (It was an old song from Chaucer.) "Grene 
shawe" is old English for greenwood and is used in the Robin Hood 
ballads. 12. Who was Marian? 13. Explain lines 3-5, page 175. (The 
oaks of the forest have been cut down by the ax of the men from 
the dockyard and made into ships, which have already rotted on the 
seas.) 14. Explain "woods unshorn," "Lincoln green," "tight Little 
John," "Sherwood clan," "Let us two a burden try" (the burden of a 
song ; that is, let us try to make a song about it) . 

If you do not remember the stories about Robin Hood, read Howard 
Pyle's "Robin Hood" or Miss Lansing's "Life in the Greenwood." 
Some of the original Robin Hood ballads are in the last-named book. 

TO AUTUMN 

[This poem was written at Winchester in the autumn of 18 19. In 
a letter from that place, dated September 22, Keats says : 

How beautiful the season is now ! How fine the air — a temperate sharp- 
ness about it 1 . . . I never liked stubble fields so much as now — aye, better 
than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble field looks warm, in 
the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my 
Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.] 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
Close bosom friend of the maturing Sun ; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
With fruit the vines that round the thatch eaves run ; 



JOHN KEATS 177 

To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees, 
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease ; 

For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells. 



Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 10 

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
Or on a half -reaped furrow sound asleep, 

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers : 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 15 

Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 

Or by a cider press, with patient look, 

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 



Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 

Think not of them ; thou hast thy music too, — 20 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day 

And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue ; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 25 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 

Hedge crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 

The redbreast whistles from a garden croft ; 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 



178 ROMANTIC LITERATURE 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Why is Autumn a "close bosom friend of the maturing sun," 
and how is their friendship shown ? What figure of speech is found in 
this line? What is meant by the maturing Sun? by thatch eaves? 
2. What does the word mossed tell you about the age of the trees? What 
does the word bend add to the picture of the apple trees? What flowers 
would a late. autumn be likely to bring out for the bees? 3. Explain 
the line "For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells." 4. Men- 
tion all the things in the first stanza that Autumn and the Sun conspire 
to do. 

5. To whom does thee refer in line 8, page 177? Name some of 
the things that make up the store of Autumn. 6. Notice this fine 
personification of Autumn as a young woman sitting among the grain. 
What is meant by winnowing wind? If a winnowing wind lifted the 
hair of Autumn, what should you think the hair might represent? 

7. Why is Autumn represented as asleep on a half -reaped furrow? 

8. Explain "Drowsed with the fume of poppies." Why does Autumn's 
hook spare the next swath? 

9. Describe the picture of Autumn as a gleaner. What is meant by 
"thy laden head"? (A print of "The Return of the Gleaners" or of 
"The Shepherd Star" by Breton will answer this question.) 10. How 
many pictures of Autumn do you find in the second stanza, and which 
do you like the best? n. How does the poet compare Autumn with 
Spring? 12. Describe " barred clouds," " bloom the soft-dying day." 
(Think of how clouds look at evening with the reflection of the setting 
sun upon them.) 13. Describe the stubble plains, and tell where they 
get their rosy hue. 

14. Explain "in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn." Why does 
the poet think of the sound as "wailful." What are river sallows? 

15. Explain "borne aloft or sinking as the light wind lives or dies." 

16. Explain "hilly bourn," "with treble soft," "garden croft." 17. In 
the last line, why are the swallows gathering? 18. Memorize the 
poem. As you read, try to feel the soft, sweet,- drowsy atmosphere of a 
warm day in autumn. Compare with Dr. van Dyke's " Indian Summer," 
page 580 of this book. 

Other poems of Keats which are comparatively easy to read are "On 
the Grasshopper and the Cricket," "On First Looking into Chapman's 
Homer," and "I Stood Tiptoe upon a Little Hill." 



IV. EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

i 706-1 790 

One of the earliest of our important American writers 
was Benjamin Franklin. He wrote the story of his own life 
so clearly and so interestingly that no one else can hope to 
tell it half so well. He did not write it to celebrate himself, 
and did not intend it for publication, but began it as a letter 
to his son, William Franklin, then colonial governor of New 
Jersey. In 1771 the elder Franklin, then sixty-five years old, 
was in England on public business for the colonies, and having 
taken a brief vacation, he spent part of the time in writ- 
ing this letter, which consisted of about one third of the 
present " Autobiography." 

His friends urged him to finish the work, and in response 
to their continued requests he wrote, thirteen years later, 
another portion of it. This was written in France, where he 
was at that time the representative of the new American 
nation. Toward the end of his life he wrote a little more 
upon it, but the work was never finished. A part of it 
appeared in French in 1791, but not until 1868 was the entire 
book published in English. 

The first of the following selections from the " Autobi- 
ography" is abridged; the second, describing the journey to 
Philadelphia, is nearly complete. 

179 



180 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

FRANKLIN'S BOYHOOD 

I was the youngest son, and was born in Boston, New 
England. My elder brothers were all put apprentices to 
different trades. I was put to the grammar school at eight 
years of age, my father intending to devote me to the service 

5 of the Church. I continued at the grammar school not quite 
one year, but my father, in the meantime, from a view of the 
expense of a college education, which, having so large a family, 
he could not well afford, altered his first intention, took me 
from the grammar school, and sent me to a school for writing 

ioand arithmetic, kept by a then famous man, Mr. George 
Brownell. At ten years old I was taken home to assist my 
father in his business, which was that of a tallow-chandler 
and soap-boiler. I disliked the trade and had a strong in- 
clination for the sea, but my father declared against it; 

15 however, living near the water, I was much in and about it, 
learnt early to swim well and to manage boats. 

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money 
that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased 
with the " Pilgrim's Progress," my first collection was of 

20 John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. This 
bookish inclination at length determined my father to make 
me a printer, though he had already one son, James, of that 
profession. In 1 7 1 7 my brother James returned from England 
with a press and letters, to set up his business in Boston. In 

25 a little time I made great proficiency in the business and be- 
came a useful hand to my brother. I now took a fancy to 
poetry and made some little pieces. My brother, thinking 
it might turn to account, encouraged me and put me on 
composing occasional ballads, and when they were printed 

30 he sent me about the town to sell them. Though a brother, 
he considered himself as my master, and me as his apprentice. 
He was passionate and had often beaten me, which I took 
extremely amiss; and thinking my apprenticeship very 



182 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

tedious, I was continually wishing for some opportunity of 
shortening it. 

At length, a fresh difference arising, I took upon me to 
assert my freedom. When he found I would leave him, he 
5 took care to prevent my getting employment in any other 
printing house of the town, by going round and speaking to 
every master, who accordingly refused to give me work. I 
then thought of going to New York, as the nearest place 
where there was a printer. My friend Collins agreed with 

iothe captain of a New York sloop for my passage. I sold 
some of my books to raise a little money, was taken on board, 
and as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in 
New York, near three hundred miles from home, a boy of 
but seventeen, without the least recommendation to, or knowl- 

15 edge of, any person in the place, and with very little money 
in my pocket. 

THE JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA 

My inclinations for the sea were by this time worn out, 
or I might now have gratified them. But having a trade 
and supposing myself a pretty good workman, I offered my 

20 service to the printer in the place, old Mr. William Bradford, 
who had been the first printer in Pennsylvania, but removed 
from thence. He could give me no employment, having little 
to do and help enough already; but says he, "My son at 
Philadelphia has lately lost his principal hand, by death. If 

25 you go thither I believe he may employ you." Philadel- 
phia was a hundred miles further; I set out, however, in a 
boat for Amboy, leaving my chest and things to follow me 
round by sea. 

In crossing the bay we met with a squall that tore our 

30 rotten sails to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill, 
and drove us upon Long Island. On our way a drunken 
Dutchman, who was a passenger, too, fell overboard ; when 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 183 

he was sinking I reached through the water to his shock pate 
and drew him up, so that we got him in again. His ducking 
sobered him a little, and he went to sleep. . . . 

When we drew near the island, we found it was at a place 
where there could be no landing, there being a great surf on 5 
the stony beach. So we dropped anchor and swung round 
towards the shore. Some people came down to the water 
edge and hollowed to us, as we did to them ; but the wind was 
so high, and the surf so loud, that we could not hear so as to 
understand each other. There were canoes on the shore, 10 
and we made signs and hollowed that they should fetch us ; 
but they either did not understand us or thought it im- 
practicable ; so they went away, and night coming on, we 
had no remedy but to wait till the wind should abate; and 
in the meantime the boatman and I concluded to sleep, if we 15 
could, and so crowded into the scuttle with the Dutchman, 
who was still wet ; and the spray beating over the head of our 
boat leaked through to us, so that we were soon almost as wet 
as he. In this manner we lay all night, with very little rest ; 
but the wind abating the next day, we made a shift to reach 20 
Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the water, 
without victuals. 

In the evening I found myself very feverish and went in to 
bed ; but having read somewhere that cold water drank 
plentifully was good for a fever, I followed the prescription, 25 
sweat plentifully most of the night, my fever left me, and in 
the morning, crossing the ferry, I proceeded on my journey 
on foot, having fifty miles to Burlington, where I was told I 
should find boats that would carry me the rest of the way to 
Philadelphia. 30 

It rained very hard all the day ; I was thoroughly soaked, 
and by noon a good deal tired ; so I stopped at a poor inn, 
where I stayed all night, beginning now to wish that I had 
never left home. I cut so miserable a figure, too, that I found, 
by the questions asked me, I was suspected to be some 35 



1 84 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

runaway servant, and in danger of being taken up on that 
suspicion. However, I proceeded the next day and got in 
the evening to an inn within eight or ten miles of Burlington, 
kept by one Dr. Brown. He entered into conversation with 

s me while I took some refreshment, and finding I had read a 
little, became very sociable and friendly. Our acquaintance 
continued as long as he lived. . . . 

At his house I lay that night, and the next morning reached 
Burlington, but had the mortification to find that the regular 

10 boats were gone a little before my coming, and no other ex- 
pected to go before Tuesday, this being Saturday ; wherefore 
I returned to an old woman in the town, of whom I had bought 
gingerbread to eat on the water, and asked her advice. She 
invited me to lodge at her house till a passage by water should 

15 offer; and being tired with my foot traveling, I accepted the 
invitation. She was very hospitable, gave me a dinner of 
oxcheek with great good will, and I thought myself fixed till 
Tuesday should come. However, walking in the evening by 
the side of the river, a boat came by, which I found was going 

20 towards Philadelphia, with several people in her. They 
took me in, and as there was no wind, we rowed all the way ; 
and about midnight, not having yet seen the city, some of the 
company were confident we must have passed it, and would 
row no farther; the others knew not where we were; so we 

25 put toward, the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old 
fence, with the rails of which we made a fire, the night being 
cold, in October, and there we remained till daylight. Then 
one of the company knew the place to be Cooper's Creek, a 
little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got 

30 out of the creek, and arrived there about eight or nine o'clock 
on the Sunday morning and landed at the Market street 
wharf. . . . 

I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come 
round by sea. I was dirty from my journey ; my pockets were 

35 stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 185 

where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with traveling, 
rowing, and want of rest ; I was very hungry ; and my whole 
stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling 
in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my 
passage, who at first refused it, on account of my rowing ; but 5 
I insisted on their taking it, a man being sometimes more 
generous when he has but a little money than when he has 
plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but 
little. 

Then I walked up the street, gazing about, till near the 10 
market house I met a boy with bread. I had made many 
a meal on bread, and inquiring where he got it, I went im- 
mediately to the baker's he directed me to, in Second street, 
and asked for biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston; 
but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. 15 

Then I asked for a threepenny loaf and was told they had 
none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of 
money and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, 
I bade him give me threepenny worth of any sort. He gave 
me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at 20 
the quantity, but took it, and having no room in my pockets, 
walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. 
Thus I went up Market street as far as Fourth street, passing 
by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, 
standing at the door, saw me and thought I made, as I cer- 25 
tainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then 
I turned and went down Chestnut street and part of Walnut 
street, eating my roll all the way, and coming round, I found 
myself again at Market street wharf, near the boat I came in, 
to which I went for a draft of the river water; and being 30 
filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and 
her child that came down the river in the boat with us and were 
waiting to go further. 

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by 
this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all 35 



1 86 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

walking the same way. I joined them and thereby was led 
into the great meetinghouse of the Quakers near the market. 
I sat down among them and after looking round awhile and 
hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labor and 
5 want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep and continued 
so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to 
rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or 
slept in, in Philadelphia. 

Walking down again toward the river and looking in the 

10 faces of people, I met a young Quaker man whose countenance 
I liked, and accosting him, requested he would tell me where a 
stranger could get lodging. We were then near the sign of the 
Three Mariners. "Here," says he, "is one place that enter- 
tains strangers, but it is not a reputable house ; if thee wilt 

15 walk with me, I'll show thee a better." He brought me to 
the Crooked Billet in Water street. Here I got a dinner, and 
while I was eating it several sly questions were asked me, as 
it seemed to be suspected from my youth and appearance 
that I might be some runaway. 

20 After dinner my sleepiness returned, and being shown to a 
bed, I lay down without undressing and slept till six in the 
evening, was called to supper, and went to bed again very 
early, and slept soundly till next morning. Then I made 
myself as tidy as I could and went to Andrew Bradford the 

25 printer's. I found in the shop the old man his father, whom 
I had seen at New York, and who, traveling on horseback, 
had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduced me to his 
son, who received me civilly, gave me a breakfast, but told 
me he did not at present want a hand, being lately supplied 

30 with one ; but there was another printer in town, lately set up, 

one Keimer, who perhaps might employ me ; if not, I should 

be welcome to lodge at his house, and he would give me a 

little work to do now and then till fuller business should offer. 

The old gentleman said he would go with me to the new 

35 printer ; and when we found him, "Neighbor," says Bradford, 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 187 

"I have brought to see you a young man of your business; 
perhaps you may want such a one." He asked me a few 
questions, put a composing stick in my hand to see how I 
worked, and then said he would employ me soon, though he 
had just then nothing for me to do. . . . 5 

Keimer's printing house, I found, consisted of an old 
shattered press and one small, worn-out font of English, which 
he was then using himself. I endeavored to put his press 
into order fit to be worked with. A few days after, Keimer 
sent for me. And now he had got another pair of cases, and 10 
a pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work. 

[Franklin proved to be a much better printer than his em- 
ployer, and Governor Keith promised to help him set up a 
shop of his own. With this purpose Franklin went to London 
to buy type and a press, but Keith did not advance the money 
as he had promised, and the young man had to depend upon 
himself, as usual. He found a job in a London printing office 
and worked there for about a year and a half. Then he 
returned to Philadelphia and served for a time as clerk in a 
dry-goods store, but before long was in the printing business 
again. Later he bought a small newspaper, the Pennsylvania 
Gazette, which Keimer had started, and made it one of the 
important newspapers of the colonies. 

In 1730, at the age of twenty-four, Franklin married Miss 
Read, the young lady who, as a girl, had seen him eating his 
rolls on that morning when he entered Philadelphia. He was 
active in every public work. At twenty-five he founded 
the Philadelphia Library ; at twenty-six he began the publi- 
cation of "Poor Richard's Almanac," which he continued for 
a quarter of a century, writing or putting into form for it the 
proverbs and wise sayings which made it famous. At thirty- 
one he was made postmaster of Philadelphia, and some years 
later postmaster-general for the colonies. He suggested and 
helped to organize an academy which developed into the 



1 88 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

University of Pennsylvania. He was interested in science, 
and his experiments with a kite and a silk cord proved that 
lightning was electricity, a fact not before known. For this 
discovery several English universities gave him the degree of 
Doctor of Laws. 

He was of great service as an adviser during the French 
and Indian War ; he went to England as a special represent- 
ative of the colonies before the Revolution and secured the 
repeal of the Stamp Act ; he was one of the committee who 
drafted the Declaration of Independence, and during the war 
represented the colonies in France, gaining the help of the 
French government at a time when it was most needed. At 
the close of the war he returned to this country and, although 
he was then eighty years of age, was elected governor of 
Pennsylvania, and a few years later was active in framing the 
new Constitution of the United States. Whatever he did, 
he did well. That was the reason for his success.! 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give a sketch of Franklin's life. How did he get his education? 
2. Explain "apprentice." 3. What advantage did Franklin's knowl- 
edge of books give to him on his journey? Is an educated person likely 
to be better treated by strangers than an uneducated one? 4. Does 
the exactness of Franklin's statements — for instance, that the woman 
gave him oxcheek for dinner or that he had a Dutch dollar and about a 
shilling in copper — increase or lessen the interest of the story ? Why ? 

5. What reason is given for a person's being more generous when he 
has but little money? Is there any other reason? 6. Explain 
"Crooked Billet," "composing stick," "font." 7. When Keimer told 
Franklin that he had no work, what did Franklin do to show that he 
wished to be helpful ? Does this give you a hint as to one reason for his 
success in life? Name other reasons. Some one has defined success as 
"a genius for hard work." What does that mean, and how does it apply 
to Franklin? 

You will want to read all of the "Autobiography" and some of the 
proverbs from "Poor Richard's Almanac." 



V. NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENG- 
LISH LITERATURE 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

1795-1881 

Up among the pasture lands which border the Firth of 
Solway, in Scotland, stands the little village of Ecclefechan. 
A poor, commonplace little village it is — scarcely more than 
a row of houses on each side of the road — but it is celebrated 
as the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle, one of the greatest 
thinkers and most original writers of Queen Victoria's reign. 

The elder Carlyle was a stonemason — a poor man but 
a good workman and as honest as the day. Years after 
he had died his son said of him, " Could I write my books 
as he built his houses, walk my way so manfully through 
this shadow world and leave it with so little blame, it were 
more than all my hopes." 

Thomas Carlyle inherited from his father the plain, rough, 
sturdy honesty that seems the most noteworthy thing in 
all his life and writings. He always felt that he owed much 
to his mother also, but he was less like her, for she was a 
mild and quiet woman, and Thomas was neither mild nor 
quiet. With his brothers and sisters, of whom there were 
nine, he roamed over the roads and meadows, learned a 
little reading and arithmetic at the village school, and at 
ten was sent to school at the neighboring town of Annan, 
five miles away. 

189 



i go NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

At fourteen Carlyle went to Edinburgh University. Edin- 
burgh was more than eighty miles from Ecclefechan, and 
traveling by stagecoach was expensive. So he set out to 
walk, leaving home early one morning before light, with his 
little bundle of clothes thrown over his shoulder. His father 
and mother walked with him a few miles, and another boy, 
somewhat older than himself, who was also going to the 
university, went on with him. 

Carlyle spent five years at the university, worked hard, 
neglected his health, and sowed the seeds of a chronic 
dyspepsia, which attended him through life, often making 
him very wretched and sometimes very cross. 

After leaving the university he tried teaching school, 
studying law, and writing for the magazines, but with little 
success. He was not well and was worried with fears and 
doubts. Finally, as he tells us in one of his books, "There 
arose a thought in me, and I asked myself 'What art thou 
afraid of? Wherefore like a coward dost thou forever pip 
and whimper and go cowering and trembling? Despicable 
biped ! What is the sum total of the worst that lies before 
thee? Death? W T ell, Death. . . . Let it come then; I will 
meet it and defy it ! ' And as I so thought, there rushed like a 
stream of fire over my whole soul, and I shook base fear away 
from me forever." 

Carlyle now devoted all his time to writing. He trans- 
lated Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" and several other stories 
from the German, he wrote a life of Schiller, he published 
essays in the magazines, and in the midst of his work he 
married Jane Welsh, a brilliant literary woman, who was 
almost as talented as her husband. 

But literature did not pay very well, and the Carlyles were 
poor. To save money they moved to a farm at Craigen- 
puttoch, where they spent six years, while Carlyle wrote 
some of his best essays and the book "Sartor Resartus." 
Craigenputtoch was so far away from every one that they 



i 9 2 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

finally decided to go to London, where they could live among 
people. So they rented a house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
and there in the course of t me Carlyle came to be known 
as one of the great thinkers of his day. He wrote "The 
French Revolution" in 1837, and a few years later "Heroes 
and Hero Worship." Before publication he lent the manu- 
script of the first volume of "The French Revolution" to a 
friend to read, and the friend's servant, thinking that it was 
waste paper, burned it. This was a great blow to Carlyle, 
for it meant that he must do the work all over. But he did 
not let his friend know how much it hurt him. Instead, he 
said to Mrs. Carlyle, "We must try to hide from him how 
very serious this business is." In his discouragement he 
one day saw a bricklayer building a high wall, brick by brick. 
"There," he said, "if this workman can patiently do such a bit 
of work, I can rewrite the French Revolution." And he did it. 

Carlyle used to write in his little back garden, and Tenny- 
son, then a young poet — fourteen years younger than Car- 
lyle — would often visit him there. Thackeray also came to 
see him, and Emerson, and many of the greatest writers 
of the day, and they all went away with the same thought — 
that they had met a true, honest, genuine man. 

In 1865 Carlyle finished his "History of Frederick the 
Great," upon which he had spent thirteen years of constant 
work. The same year he was made Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
University. In the midst of the honors which were heaped 
upon him on this occasion, Mrs. Carlyle died very suddenly, 
and Carlyle, then seventy years of age, was so broken by 
the shock that he never recovered. He lived fifteen years 
after it, mostly in retirement, and died in 188 1. At his own 
request his body was buried not among the great in West- 
minster Abbey, but with his kinsfolk in the little churchyard 
at Ecclefechan. 

Carlyle has sometimes been criticized for not using the 
best of English. It is true that his sentences are not very 



THOMAS CARLYLE 193 

smooth, but they are strong and vigorous and straight- 
forward — much like himself — and they have a pictur- 
esqueness that is often lacking in the work of more careful 
writers. Carlyle was different from most men, and his style 
is different, but it was the best style for him, because it fitted 
what he had to say. 



THE FLIGHT OF LOUIS XVI 

[This vivid story is from "The French Revolution." During the 
early months of the conflict between the people and the nobility of 
France, the people asked only for better conditions and did not seek the 
overthrow of the king. But as the king gave them only promises, the 
feeling against him became at length so strong that he realized his only 
safety lay in flight. The soldiers, except his bodyguard, were in the 
service of the government and were commanded by the Marquis de 
Lafayette, who had played so important a part in our American Revolu- 
tion. The government, on the one hand, was constantly watching the 
royal family lest they should try to escape ; the king's friends, on the 
other hand, were constantly trying to find a way to smuggle them out 
of Paris. 

At length Count Fersen, a Swedish soldier and courtier, disguised as 
a coachman, drove them, also in disguise, through the streets of Paris, 
across the Barriers and north into the open country. They were after- 
wards captured and brought back to Paris, where, in spite of the efforts 
of the moderate party, of whom Lafayette was one, both the king and 
the queen were beheaded. 1 

On Monday night, the twentieth of June, 1791, about 
eleven o'clock, there is many a hackney-coach and glass- 
coach still rumbling or at rest on the streets of Paris. But 
of all glass-coaches we recommend this to thee, O Reader, 
which stands drawn up in the Rue de l'Echelle hard by the 5 
Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries ; in the Rue de l'Echelle 
that then was, " opposite Ronsin the saddler's door," as if 
waiting for a fare there ! 



194 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Not long does it wait; a hooded dame with two hooded 

children has issued from a door where no sentry walks, into 

the Tuileries Court of Princes, into the Carrousel, into the 

Rue de l'Echelle, where the glass-coachman readily admits 

5 them and again waits. 

Not long ; another dame, likewise hooded or shrouded, 
leaning on a servant, issues in the same manner, bids the 
servant good night, and is, in the same manner, by the 
glass-coachman, cheerfully admitted. Whither go so many 

10 dames? All the palace world is retiring home. But the 
glass-coachman still waits, his fare seemingly incomplete. 

By and by we note a thickset individual in round hat 
and peruke, arm-in-arm with some servant seemingly of 
the runner or courier sort ; he also issues through the door, 

15 starts a shoebuckle as he passes one of the sentries, stoops 
down to clasp it again, is however by the glass-coachman 
still more cheerfully admitted. And now is his fare complete? 
Not yet ; the glass-coachman still waits. 

Alas ! and the false chambermaid has warned Gouvion 

20 that she thinks the royal family will fly this very night ; and 
Gouvion, distrusting his own glazed eyes, has sent express 
for Lafayette, and Lafayette's carriage, flaring with lights, 
rolls this moment through the inner arch of the Carrousel — 
where a lady shaded in broad gypsy hat and leaning on the 

25 arm of a servant, also of the runner or courier sort, stands 
aside to let it pass and has even the whim to touch a spoke 
of it with her badine — light, little magic rod. which she calls 
badine, such as the beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafa- 
yette's carriage rolls past : all is found quiet in the Court of 

30 Princes ; sentries at their post ; majesties' apartments closed 
in smooth rest. Your false chambermaid must have been 
mistaken. Watch thou, Gouvion, with Argus' vigilance, for 
of a truth treachery is within these walls 

But where is the lady that stood aside in gypsy bat and 

3.s touched the wheel spoke with her badine? O reader, that 



THOMAS CARLYLE 195 

lady that touched the wheel spoke was the queen of France ! 
She has issued safe through that inner arch, into the Car- 
rousel itself, but not into the Rue de l'Echelle. Flurried by 
the rattle and rencounter she took the right hand, not the 
left ; neither she nor her courier knows Paris ; he indeed is 5 
no courier, but a loyal, stupid bodyguard disguised as one. 
They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and river, 
roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac, far from the glass- 
coachman, who still waits. Waits with flutter of heart, 
with thoughts — which he must button close up under his 10 
jar vie surtout ! 

Midnight clangs from all the city steeples; one precious 
hour has been spent so ; most mortals are asleep. The 
glass-coachman waits, and in what mood ! A brother jarvie 
drives up, enters into conversation, is answered cheerfully 15 
in jarvie dialect ; the brothers of the whip exchange a pinch 
of snuff, decline drinking together, and part with good night. 
Be the heavens blest ! here at length is the queen-lady, in 
gypsy hat, safe after perils, who has had to inquire her way. 
She too is admitted ; her courier jumps aloft, as the other, 20 
who is also a disguised bodyguard, has done; and now, 
glass-coachman of a thousand — Count Fersen, for the reader 
sees it is thou — drive ! 

Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen ; crack ! crack ! 
the glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. 2 5 
But is Fersen on the right road? Northeastward to the 
Barrier of Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither were 
we bound, and lo, he drives right northward ! The royal 
individual in round hat and peruke sits astonished, but right 
or wrong, there is no remedy. Crack ! crack ! we go incessant, 30 
through the slumbering city. Seldom since Paris rose out 
of mud or the long-haired kings went in bullock carts was 
there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of you, close by, 
stretched out horizontal, dormant ; and we alive and quaking ! 
Crack ! crack ! through the Rue de Grammont, across the 35 



196. NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

boulevard, towards the Barrier not of Saint-Martin, but of 
Clichy on the utmost north ! Patience, ye royal individuals ; 
Fersen understands what he is about. Passing up the Rue 
de Clichy, he alights for one moment at Madame Sullivan's. 
5 "Did Count Fersen's coachman get the Baroness de Korff's 
new berline?" 

"Gone with it an hour and half ago," grumbles respon- 
sive the drowsy porter. 

"It is well," though had not such hour-and-half been lost, 

10 it were still better. Forth therefore, O Fersen, fast, by 
the Barrier de Clichy, then eastward along the outer 
boulevard, what horses and whipcord can do ! 

Thus Fersen drives through the ambrosial night. Sleep- 
ing Paris is now all on the right hand of him, silent except for 

15 some snoring hum, and now he is eastward as far as the Barrier 
de Saint-Martin, looking earnestly for Baroness de Korff's 
berline. This heaven's berline he at length does descry, 
drawn up with its six horses, his own German coachman 
waiting on the box. Right, thou good German ! now haste, 

20 whither thou knowest ! And as for us of the glass-coach, 
haste too, O haste ! much time is already lost ! 

The august glass-coach fare, six insides, hastily packs itself 
into the new berline, two bodyguard couriers behind. The 
glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the city, to 

25 wander whither it lists — and be found next morning tumbled 
in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave 
new hammercloths, flourishing his whip. He bolts forward 
towards Bondy. There a third and final bodyguard courier 
of ours ought surely to be, with post horses ready ordered. 

30 There likewise ought that purchased chaise, with the two 
waiting maids and their bandboxes, to be, whom also her 
Majesty could not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen, 
and may the heavens turn it well ! 

Once more, by heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here 

35 is the sleeping hamlet of Bondy ; chaise with waiting women ; 



THOMAS CARLYLE 197 

horses all ready, and postilions with their churn-boots, im- 
patient in the dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the postil- 
ions with their churn-boots vault into the saddles, brandish 
circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his jarvie 
surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu ; royal hands 5 
wave speechless, inexpressible response ; Baroness de Korff's 
berline, with the royalty of France, bounds off. 

And so the royalty of France is actually fled? This pre- 
cious night, the shortest of the year, it flies and drives ! Baron- 
ess de Korff is, at bottom, Dame de Tourzel, governess of - 
the royal children, she who came hooded with the two hooded 
little ones, little Dauphin, little Madame Royale. Baroness 
de Korff's waiting maid is the queen, in gypsy hat. The 
royal individual in round hat and peruke, he is valet for the 
time being. That other hooded dame, styled traveling com-i S 
panion, is kind Sister Elizabeth. And so they rush there, 
not too impetuously, through the wood of Bondy — over a 
Rubicon in their own and France's history. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of the life of Carlyle. 2. Explain why Louis XVI 
and his family were fleeing. 3. What is meant by a glass-coach? 
What was the Tuileries? the Carrousel? 4. Who was the " glass- 
coachman," and why was he waiting in the Rue de l'Echelle? Who 
were the dames who came to the carriage? Who was the "thickset 
individual in round hat and peruke"? 5. Explain "And now, is his 
fare complete?" 6. What part did Lafayette play in this affair? 
7. Explain "Argus' vigilance," "jarvie surtout," "barrier." 

8. Explain "since Paris rose out of mud or the long-haired kings went 
in bullock carts." (Paris was at first a little village on an island in the 
Seine. The early kings of France were half barbarous.) 9. Explain 
"stretched out horizontal, dormant," "berline," "ambrosial," "six 
insides" (inside passengers), "hammercloths," "postilions with their 
churn-boots," " dauphin," "over a Rubicon in their own and France's 
history." (When Caesar crossed the Rubicon he committed an act 
from which there was no retreat.) 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

1800-1859 

In the last year of the eighteenth century, when Byron and 
Shelley and Keats and Carlyle were boys at school, and when 
Scott and Wordsworth were just beginning to write, a re- 
markable child was born into the Macaulay family of Rothley 
Temple, Leicestershire. Mr. Macaulay, the father, who was 
of Scotch descent, had been at one time governor of Sierra 
Leone, the African colony for liberated slaves ; Mrs. Macaulay 
was a Quaker, a brilliant and talented woman; and the 
Macaulay home was a place where many an act of charity 
and service was planned, and where the noblest and most 
unselfish people of that time were frequent visitors. 

I have said that the junior Macaulay was a remarkable 
boy. At three years of age he could read with ease ; at 
seven he wrote a " History of the World" — a rather ambi- 
tious undertaking, you will think ; at eight he knew by heart 
the whole of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel" ; at ten he 
composed a volume of hymns, ballads, and an epic poem. 
It is said that his favorite position was lying stretched out 
upon a rug before the fire, with his book on the floor and a 
piece of bread and butter in his hand. The fact of the bread 
and butter is comforting. If it were not for that, we might 
think him more than human. 

At twelve the boy was sent to a good private school, and 
at eighteen entered Cambridge University. There he took 
high honors in the classics and English, and gained a reputa- 
tion as a brilliant debater. His memory was wonderful ; he 
could read a page rapidly and repeat it almost word for word. 

198 



200 NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH 

After finishing his work at the university he studied law, 
but found that he was more interested in politics and litera- 
ture. At twenty-five he wrote for the Edinburgh Review his 
now famous essay on Milton. At thirty he was elected to 
Parliament, and soon became known as the best debater 
in the House. When it was known that he would take part 
in a discussion the House was always crowded, and a speech 
from him would often change the vote. He was scrupu- 
lously honest, sometimes voting for measures which meant 
the personal loss of thousands of dollars, because he believed 
that they were for the good of the people. 

While in Parliament he lost his fortune and not only be- 
came poor himself but was obliged to support his brothers 
and sisters, who had lost their money in the same disaster. 
He did this cheerfully and by working early and late soon 
put the entire family out of want. 

Macaulay was a tireless worker. He never wasted a 
minute. His literary work was done chiefly in the early 
morning, before others were up. His days were given to 
his work in Parliament, or later to his official duties as secre- 
tary of war. He spent nearly three years in India as presi- 
dent of a law commission appointed by the English govern- 
ment and as a member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta. 
He wrote during this time a series of brilliant essays on Byron, 
Johnson, Clive, Warren Hastings, and other famous literary 
and political personages, and in 1842 the stirring group of 
poems known as "Lays of Ancient Rome." 

Macaulay 's greatest work, however, is his "History of 
England," begun in 1841. The first two volumes of it were 
published eight years afterwards. Within ten days of their 
publication the whole edition had been sold, and the second 
edition was sold as soon as it appeared. Six editions were 
issued in America and disposed of as fast as they could be 
printed. It was a history that read like a story. It was 
alive. Perhaps no other writer has ever equaled Macaulay 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 201 

in this power to make the facts of history appear before the 
eye. Two more volumes of the history were published a 
few years later, but the fifth volume was unfinished at the 
time of his death in 1859. 

His last years were full of honors. Queen Victoria gave 
him the title of lord, or baron ; he was made Lord Rector 
of Glasgow University; and after his death his body was 
buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, near 
the tombs of Addison and Johnson. 

Macaulay's English was as smooth and polished as Car- 
lyle's was rough. It shows ease, grace, and clear thinking, 
but it was not gained without effort. Thackeray has said : 
"Macaulay reads twenty books to write a sentence, and 
travels one hundred miles to make a line of description. 11 
He was a hard-working, painstaking man, who had great 
natural gifts, and who earned his success by making the 
most of what God had given him. 



HORATIUS 

[In the earliest times Rome was governed by kings. Legends tell us 
of seven of these early rulers, the last of whom was Tarquin the Proud. 
During the reign of this last Tarquin his son Sextus, a wild and unre- 
strained youth, committed a crime which so enraged the Roman people 
that they drove the entire Tarquin family out of Rome and changed the 
government to a republic. Tarquin went among the neighboring Latin 
tribes, seeking to gain their help in making war against his former sub- 
jects and in restoring him to the throne. Lars Porsena of Clusium, an 
Etruscan lord, or king, at length agreed to help him and marched to 
Rome at the head of a large force of soldiers from the Etruscan towns 
lying northward, in the valley of the Po. The Romans had made a 
fortification on the hill Janiculum, separated from the city by a wooden 
bridge over the Tiber. 

But Porsena and his allies by a forced march surprised the Romans, 
seized Janiculum, and were about to cross the river, when the Roman, 
Horatius Codes, with two companions, dashed to the end of the bridge 



202 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

nearest Janiculum and held back the invaders whilst the citizens cut 
down the bridge. 

Macaulay has described the scene in this poem, which is one of the 
"Lays of Ancient Rome." "Horatius" consists of nearly six hundred 
lines, or about twenty-five pages. As it is too long to quote entire, we 
have chosen the best of it — enough to give the story and the finest of 
the descriptive passages.] 

Lars Porsena of Clusium 

By the Nine Gods he swore 
That the great house of Tarquin 

Should suffer wrong no more. 
5 By the Nine Gods he swore it, 

And named a trysting day, 
And bade his messengers ride forth, 
East and west and south and north, 

To summon his array. 

10 East and west and south and north 

The messengers ride fast, 
And tower and town and cottage 
Have heard the trumpet's blast. 
Shame on the false Etruscan 
15 Who lingers in his home, 

When Porsena of Clusium 
Is on the march for Rome ! 



The horsemen and the footmen 
Are pouring in amain 
20 From many a stately market place, 

From many a fruitful plain ; 
From many a lonely hamlet, 

Which, hid by beech and pine, 
Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest 
25 Of purple Apennine. . . . 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 203 

But by the yellow Tiber 

Was tumult and affright ; 
From all the spacious champaign 

To Rome men took their flight. 
A mile around the city 5 

The throng stopped up the ways ; 
A fearful sight it was to see 

Through two long nights and days. . . . 

I wis, in all the Senate 

There was no heart so bold 10 

But sore it ached and fast it beat, 

When that ill news was told. 
Forthwith uprose the Consul, 

Uprose the Fathers all ; 
In haste they girded up their gowns, i 5 

And hied them to the wall. 

They held a council, standing 

Before the River Gate ; 
Short time was there, ye well may guess, 

For musing or debate. 20 

Out spake the Consul roundly : 

"The bridge must straight go down; 
For since Janiculum is lost, 

Naught else can save the town." 

Just then a scout came flying, 25 

All wild with haste and fear : 
"To arms ! to arms, Sir Consul ! 

Lars Porsena is here." 
On the low hills to westward 

The Consul fixed his eye, 30 

And saw the swarthy storm of dust 

Rise fast along the sky. 



204 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

And nearer fast and nearer 

Doth the red whirlwind come ; 
And louder still and still more loud, 
From underneath that rolling cloud, 
5 Is heard the trumpet's war note proud, 

The trampling and the hum. 
And plainly and more plainly, 

Now through the gloom appears, 
Far to left and far to right, 
10 In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 

The long array of helmets bright, 

The long array of spears. . . . 

But the Consul's brow was sad, 
And the Consul's speech was low, 
is And darkly looked he at the wall, 

And darkly at the foe. 
" Their van will be upon us 

Before the bridge goes down ; 
And if they once may win the bridge, 
20 What hope to save the town?" 

Then out spake brave Horatius, 

The Captain of the Gate : 
"To every man upon this earth 

Death cometh soon or late ; 
25 And how can man die better 

Than facing fearful odds, 
For the ashes of his fathers 

And the temples of his Gods ? . . . 

"Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, 
30 With all the speed ye may ; 

I, with two more to help me, 
Will hold the foe in play. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 205 

In yon strait path a thousand 

May well be stopped by three. 
Now who will stand on either hand 
/ And keep the bridge with me?" 

Then out spake Spurius Lartius — 5 

A Ramnian proud was he : 
"Lo, I will stand at thy right hand 

And keep the bridge with thee." 
And out spake strong Herminius — 

Of Titian blood was he : 10 

"I will abide on thy left side 

And keep the bridge with thee." 

"Horatius," quoth the Consul, 

"As thou say est, so let it be." 
And straight against that great array 15 

Forth went the dauntless Three. 
For Romans in Rome's quarrel 

Spared neither land nor gold 
Nor son nor wife nor limb nor life, 

In the brave days of old. 2 ° 

Then none was for a party ; 

Then all were for the State ; 
Then the great man helped the poor, 

And the poor man loved the great ; 
Then lands were fairly portioned ; 25 

Then spoils were fairly sold : 
The Romans were like brothers 

In the brave days of old. . . . 

Now while the Three were tightening 

Their harness on their backs, 30 

The Consul was the foremost man 

To take in hand an ax ; 



206 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

And Fathers mixed with Commons 
Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, 

And smote upon the planks above, 
And loosed the props below. 

5 Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 

Right glorious to behold, 
Came flashing back the noonday light, 
Rank behind rank, like surges bright 
Of a broad sea of gold. 
10 Four hundred trumpets sounded 

A peal of warlike glee, 
As that great host, with measured tread, 
And spears advanced and ensigns spread, 
Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, 
is Where stood the dauntless Three. 

The Three stood calm and silent 

And looked upon the foes, 
And a great shout of laughter 

From all the vanguard rose ; 
20 And forth three chiefs came spurring 

Before that deep array ; 
To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, 
And lifted high their shields, and flew 

To win the narrow way ; 

25 Aunus from green Tifernum, 

Lord of the Hill of Vines ; ♦ 

And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves 

Sicken in Ilva's mines ; 
And Picus, long to Clusium 
30 Vassal in peace and war, 

Who led to fight his Umbrian powers 

From that gray crag where, girt with towers, 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 207 

The fortress of Nequinum lowers 
O'er the pale waves of Nar. 



Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus 

Into the stream beneath ; 
Herminius struck at Seius 5 

And clove him to the teeth ; 
At Picus brave Horatius 

Darted one fiery thrust, 
And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms 

Clashed in the bloody dust. 10 

Then Ocnus of Falerii 

Rushed on the Roman Three ; 
And Lausulus of Urgo, 

The rover of the sea ; 
And Aruns of Volsinium, 15 

Who slew the great wild boar, 
The great wild boar that had his den 
Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen 
And wasted fields and slaughtered men 

Along Albinia's shore. 20 

Herminius smote down Aruns ; 

Lartius laid Ocnus low ; 
Right to the heart of Lausulus 

Horatius sent a blow. 
"Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate ! 25 

No more, aghast and pale, 
From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 
The track of thy destroying bark ; 
No more Campania's hinds shall fly 
To woods and caverns, when they spy 30 

Thy thrice accursed sail." . . . 



208 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

But meanwhile ax and lever 

Have manfully been plied, 
And now the bridge hangs tottering 

Above the boiling tide. 
5 "Come back, come back, Horatius !" 

Loud cried the Fathers all. 
"Back, Lartius ! back, Herminius! 

Back, ere the ruin fall !" 

Back darted Spurius Lartius, 
10 Herminius darted back ; 

And as they passed, beneath their feet 

They felt the timbers crack ; 
But when they turned their faces, 
And on the farther shore 
15 Saw brave Horatius stand alone, 

They would have crossed once more. 

But with a crash like thunder 
Fell every loosened beam, 

And like a dam, the mighty wreck 
20 Lay right athwart the stream. 

And a long shout of triumph 
Rose from the walls of Rome, 

As to the highest turret tops 
Was splashed the yellow foam. 

25 And like a horse unbroken 

When first he feels the rein, 
The furious river struggled hard, 

And tossed his tawny mane, 
And burst the curb and bounded, 
30 Rejoicing to be free, 

And whirling down in fierce career 
Battlement and plank and pier, 
Rushed headlong to the sea. 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 209 

Alone stood brave Horatius, 

But constant still in mind, 
Thrice thirty thousand foes before 

And the broad flood behind. 
"Down with him !" cried false Sextus, 

With a smile on his pale face. 
"Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, 

"Now yield thee to our grace." 



Round turned he, as not deigning 

Those craven ranks to see ; 10 

Naught spake he to Lars Porsena, 

To Sextus naught spake he ; 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home, 
And he spake to the noble river 15 

That rolls by the towers of Rome : 

"0 Tiber! father Tiber! 

To whom the Romans pray, 
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, 

Take thou in charge this day ! " 20 

So he spake, and speaking sheathed 

The good sword by his side, 
And with his harness on his back 

Plunged headlong in the tide. 

No sound of joy or sorrow 2 5 

Was heard from either bank, 
But friends and foes in dumb surprise, 
With parted lips and straining eyes, 

Stood gazing where he sank ; 
And when above the surges 30 



210 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

They saw his crest appear, 
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
And even the ranks of Tuscany 

Could scarce forbear to cheer. 

5 But fiercely ran the current, 

Swollen high by months of rain ; 
And fast his blood was flowing, 

And he was sore in pain, 
And heavy was his armor, 
10 And spent with changing blows ; 

And oft they thought him sinking, 
But still again he rose. 

Never, I ween, did swimmer 
In such an evil case 
15 Struggle through such a raging flood 

Safe to the landing place ; 
But his limbs were borne up bravely 

By the brave heart within, 
And our good father Tiber 
20 Bare bravely up his chin. 

" Curse on him !" quoth false Sextus, 

"Will not the villain drown? 
But for this stay, ere close of day 

We should have sacked the town !" 
25 "Heaven help him !" quoth Lars Porsena, 

"And bring him safe to shore ; 
For such a gallant feat of arms 

Was never seen before." 

And now he feels the bottom ; 
30 Now on dry earth he stands ; 

Now round him throng the Fathers 
To press his gory hands ; 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 211 

And now, with shouts and clapping 

And noise of weeping loud, 
He enters through the River Gate, 

Borne by the joyous crowd. 

They gave him of the corn land, 5 

That was of public right, 
As much as two strong oxen 

Could plow from morn till night ; 
And they made a molten image 

And set it up on high, 
And there it stands unto this day 

To witness if I lie. 

It stands in the Comitium, 

Plain for all folk to see — 
Horatius in his harness 15 

Halting upon one knee ; 
And underneath is written 

In letters all of gold 
How valiantly he kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 



20 



And still his name sounds stirring 

Unto the men of Rome, 
As the trumpet blast that cries to them 

To charge the Volscian home ; 
And wives still pray to Juno 2 5 

For boys with hearts as bold 
As his who kept the bridge so well 

In the brave days of old. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Macaulay's life. 2. Who was Lars Porsena, 
and how did he happen to be fighting the Romans ? Who was Tarquin ? 
3. Locate upon a map : Rome, the Tiber, Ostia, the Apennines, Clusium 



212 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

(now Chiusi, near Florence). Who were the Etruscans? In what 
valley was Etruria (now Tuscany) ? 4. What is meant by the Nine 
Gods? by a "trysting day"? by "the spacious champaign"? What 
makes the Tiber yellow? Explain " I wis." (In old English iwis or 
ywis was an adverb, meaning "certainly." It was sometimes, as here, 
written with a capital, because wis was thought to be a verb.) 

5. Explain "Consul," "the Fathers." 6. What and where was Ja- 
niculum? Explain or draw a diagram showing how the bridge lay. 
(The river here runs nearly south. Rome was on the east side of it ; 
Janiculum on the west.) 7. Note especially the picture beginning with 
line 29, page 203, and the phrases "red whirlwind," "rolling cloud," 
"broken gleams of dark-blue light," "long array of helmets bright." 
8. What was Horatius's argument for remaining at his post of duty? 
Memorize this stanza. 9. Read and memorize the stanza that tells the 
condition of the Roman republic in its early days. 

10. Explain "And Fathers mixed with Commons," "Came flashing 
back the noonday light," "like surges bright of a broad sea of gold," 
"Umbrian powers," "the pale waves of Nar." n. Explain the refer- 
ence to the "great wild boar." (There is a legend that an enormous 
boar once roamed the marshes around Cosa — now Orbetello — not 
far from the mouth of the river Albinia, killing men and destroying 
property. It was at length conquered by Aruns, lord or king of Volsin- 
ium.) 12. Explain "Lie there . . . fell pirate" (Lausulus is said to 
have been a sea rover who preyed upon the commerce of the Italian 
coasts. Ostia is the seaport of Rome); "Campania's hinds," "boiling 
tide." 13. Explain the figure beginning "And like a horse unbroken." 
Is this a simile or a metaphor ? 

14. What does the mention of Horatius's home, line 13, page 209, add 
to the picture? 15. What do the words "O Tiber! father Tiber!" 
tell you of the way in which Horatius regarded the river? 16. What 
do the remarks of Sextus and of Porsena (lines 21, 25, page 210) tell us 
of the character of the two men? 17. Explain "the Comitium," 
" the Volscian." 18. What reward did Horatius have ? (There was more 
than the corn land and the statue.) 19. What was the great service that 
Horatius rendered to his country and to all men in doing this deed? 
Was it more than simply keeping the Etruscans out of Rome ? 

Read others of the "Lays of Ancient Rome." Also, as examples of 
a soldier's duty, Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," Elbert 
Hubbard's "A Message to Garcia," Fitz-Greene Halleck's "Marco 
Bozzaris," and Alan Seeger's " I Have a Rendezvous with Death." 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

1801-1890 

In the heart of London, not far from the Bank of England, 
John Henry Newman was born in 1801. His father was a 
banker and at that time a prosperous man, though he after- 
wards lost his fortune. His mother was of French descent, 
her ancestors being Huguenots, who had come to England in 
the reign of Charles the Second to escape the persecutions in 
France. 

John Henry was the eldest of a family of six children. 
As a boy he was gentle, affectionate, and true-hearted. He 
read the Bible early, and it is said that he knew it almost by 
heart. The clear and forcible English style which marked his 
writings later in life probably came in large measure from this 
knowledge and training. 

When he was seven his father sent him to a private school 
at Ealing, where there were about three hundred pupils. 
He was shy and not particularly fond of outdoor sports, but 
was popular among his schoolmates because of his kindness 
and though tfulness, his brilliant mind, and his unassuming 
ways. 

He began to practice composition at a very early age. At 
nine he kept a diary in which he wrote verses and observations 
upon men and things. He was critical of his work, and 
generally it did not satisfy him. At the end of his diary he 
says, "I think I shall burn it," but he never did. He was 
fond of music and when still very young played admirably 
upon the violin. At twelve he composed an opera; at 

213 



214 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

fourteen he began a paper which he called The Spy. Not 
liking this, he soon afterwards began another paper called 
The Anti-Spy, in which he criticized what he had written in 
The Spy and showed the absurdity of it. 

He was an imaginative, dreamy boy. Writing, long after- 
wards, of those days, he says: "I wished the Arabian Tales 
were true ; my imagination ran on unknown influences, on 
magical powers and talismans. I thought life might be a 
dream, or I an angel and all this world a playful deception." 

At sixteen he went to Oxford and at twenty-one was made 
a Fellow of Oriel College — a high honor for a young man and 
one which at once brought him into notice as a scholar. He 
studied law for a short time, but decided to devote himself 
to the ministry, became a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land, and for nearly twenty years was vicar of St. Mary's at 
Oxford, while still retaining his connection with the university. 
At the age of forty-four he changed his religious belief and 
entered the Roman Catholic Church, in which he became a 
priest and in his later years a cardinal. He died in 1890, at 
the age of eighty-nine. 

A GENTLEMAN 

[This description of a gentleman is taken from one of a series of ad- 
dresses on " The Idea of a University," given in Dublin. 1 

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who 
never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as 
far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely 
removing the obstacles which hinder the free and un- 

5 embarrassed action of those about him. His benefits may be 
considered as parallel to what are called comforts or con- 
veniences in arrangements of a personal nature ; like an easy- 
chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold 
and fatigue, though Nature provides both means of rest and 

10 animal heat without them. 



216 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids what- 
ever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom 
he is cast — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all 
restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great 
s concern being to make every one at ease and at home. 
He has his eyes on all his company ; he is tender towards the 
bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards 
the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he 
guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may 

10 irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never 
wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, 
and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never 
speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends him- 
self by a mere retort ; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is 

is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with 
him, and interprets everything for the best. 

He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes 
unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp 
sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not 

20 say out. From a long-sighted prudence he observes the 
maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct our- 
selves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our 
friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults ; 
he is too well employed to remember injuries. He is patient, 

25 forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles ; he 
submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement 
because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. 
He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear- 
headed to be unjust ; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as 

30 brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, 
consideration, indulgence ; he throws himself into the minds 
of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows 
the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its 
province, and its limits. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 217 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

£. Give a sketch of the life of Cardinal Newman. 2. What brief 
definition of a gentleman is given in the first paragraph? 3. In what 
way is a gentleman like an easy-chair or a good fire? 4. Explain "clash- 
ing of opinion," "collision of feeling," "resentment," "merciful towards 
the absurd," "unseasonable allusions," "He makes light of favors while 
he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring." 

5. What is meant by defending oneself by a mere retort? by being 
"scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him"? 
What are "personalities"? 6. Repeat and memorize the "maxim of the 
ancient sage." 7. Define "inevitable," "bereavement," "irreparable," 
"destiny," "candor." 8. Make a list of the chief characteristics of a 
gentleman. 9. Do you agree with Newman's description? 

Read Newman's famous hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," which he wrote 
during a calm at sea on his return to England from Italy. This may be 
found in almost any hymnal. 



What is it to be a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be 
gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise ; and possessing 
all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful out- 
ward manner. — Thackeray. 

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for 
courtesy. — Emerson. 

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other 
people's ill manners. — Chesterfield. 

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of 
it to anyone else. — Dickens. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 

1809-1892 

Among the lovely hills of Lincolnshire, in England, lies 
the little village of Somersby, and near it on a green, grassy 
slope is the house in which Tennyson was born. It is an old 
white house with a tile roof and many queer chimneys, a 
sunny bay window, and a fine old garden full of flowers. 
Around it are elms and poplars, and at the foot of the hill a 
brook ripples over the stones on its way to the river. 

Alfred Tennyson, the third of a family of twelve children, 
first opened his eyes in this old white house on an August day 
in 1809, two years after Longfellow was born. 

His father, who was a clergyman and a scholar, taught his 
children to love books and told them many a story of King 
Arthur and the old days of knighthood. Alfred Tennyson, 
even when a small child, was a true poet — for a poet, you 
know, is not only one who can write verses, but one who sees 
beauty in everything and who feels more than other people 
feel. So the boy Alfred, when he was only five years old, 
playing one windy day in the old garden, tossing his arms and 
running with the storm, cried out, "I hear a voice that's 
speaking in the wind." That was real poetry and showed 
that the boy, even then, heard what many never hear. 

When he became a little older he used to spend glorious 
afternoons with his brothers "playing knight." A long stick 
was a lance; a heap of stones was a castle. They fought 
bravely for their king, who was a piece of a willow branch 
stuck into the ground and surrounded by his courtiers, a 



ALFRED TENNYSON 219 

circle of common sticks. Then they wrote stories, long stories, 
a chapter every day, and at dinner time each put his chapter 
under the potato bowl upon the table for their father to read. 
Those were fine old days, and Tennyson, when he became a 
man, often spoke of them. 

His oldest brother, Frederick, and his second brother, 
Charles, when they grew up, also wrote poetry. Charles 
and Alfred were close friends. When Alfred was eighteen 
they together sold a number of their poems to a publisher for 
twenty pounds, or about a hundred dollars, and these poems 
were published with the title "Poems by Two Brothers." 

At college Alfred met Arthur Hallam, another noble young 
poet, who became his dearest friend. Together they went to 
Spain to carry important messages to a party of Spanish 
patriots who were righting for liberty. The war was not 
successful, but the two friends tramped through the Pyrenees 
and saw that wonderful mountain scenery, — snow peaks and 
deep gorges and low sunny valleys beyond, — and it rilled 
their hearts with poetry, so that they could not help but 
write. 

Tennyson had published two volumes of poems since the 
" Poems by Two Brothers" and had taken a prize for a poem 
which he wrote at college. He was just beginning to be 
known as a poet when his friend Hallam died. Tennyson 
was so heartbroken that he did not care himself to live, and 
for ten years he published no more. But he began to write 
a noble poem in memory of his friend and called it "In 
Memoriam." He spent much of his time for seventeen years 
upon this work, and also began his "Idylls of the King," 
which tells of the deeds of King Arthur and his knights. 
These knights had been his greatest heroes ever since the time 
that he had played with the long stick for his lance and the 
stone heap for his castle. 

When he was forty-one, three important things happened 
to him. He published his great poem "In Memoriam"; 



220 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

he was honored by the queen with the title of poet laureate of 
England; and he married Emily Sellwood, a young woman 
whom he had loved for many years, but whom he had been too 
poor to marry until then. 

He was now both rich and famous. He went to live in a 
beautiful home called Farringford, on the Isle of Wight, 
surrounded with parks and groves and pastures and gardens, 
all overlooking the sea. There he remained for many years 
with his wife and two sons, one of whom he called Hallam, 
after his early friend. People from all over the world came to 
see him. Among his friends were Carlyle and Thackeray 
and Dickens and Kingsley and Longfellow and many others 
whose names are famous. But many also came simply to 
look at him and to say that they had seen the great poet, and 
this he did not like. So he built another home in Surrey, 
which he called Aldworth, and there he spent his summers. 
He used to do his writing in the early morning and usually took 
a walk before luncheon, with his two dogs, of whom he was 
very fond. Sometimes his tall figure, with its strong, noble 
face, its broad felt hat, its cloak thrown back in the wind, 
might also be seen alone on a moonlit night, striding across 
the moor. He especially loved to be out on nights when the 
wind was blowing wildly and the clouds were scudding across 
the sky. 

He died one evening at the ripe old age of eighty-three, 
at his home at Aldworth, in the moonlight, with his family 
around him and a volume of Shakespeare lying open at his 
side. 

Among his best-known poems are "In Memoriam," "Idylls 
of the King," "Maud," "Enoch Arden," "Dora," "Locksley 
Hall," and "The Lady of Shalott." Among his shorter poems 
are "Sir Galahad," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," 
"The Brook," and "Crossing the Bar." You will notice the 
music that is always in his verse. It runs along almost as if 
it were singing itself. 



IS 



222 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

THE BUGLE SONG 

[In 1842 Tennyson made a journey to Ireland and visited the Lakes 
of Killarney. When he first saw them the sun was setting, and the 
golden light fell upon the old castle and the surrounding mountain peaks. 
As he stood spellbound by the beauty of the scene, a boatman's bugle 
sounded over the water and was echoed and reechoed from cliff to cliff. 
It seemed like fairyland, and the thin, clear echoes were like the horns 
of the elves. 

Then the thought came to Tennyson that our lives also have echoes, 
and that our deeds, whether good or bad, influence other souls and are 
repeated back in other lives. But while the bugle echoes grow fainter 
and fainter until they are lost, the echoes of our deeds grow stronger 
and go on forever. 

This song is introduced at the beginning of Part IV of Tennyson's 
poem "The Princess." Notice the music of it and try to express the 
dying echoes in your reading.] 

The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 223 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of the life of Tennyson. 2. Under what circum- 
stances was the "Bugle Song" written? 3. What do you see in the 
first stanza? What is the "splendor" in line 1? Explain "snowy 
summits old in story." (The mountains around Killarney are the sub- 
ject of many legends.) 4. What is the important thought in the second 
stanza? What is meant by "scar"? Why are the glens "purple"? 
5. What is the thought in the third stanza? To whom does the poet 
seem to be speaking? To what does "they" refer? What word or 
words are contrasted with "they"? Explain how "Our echoes roll 
from soul to soul." 6. Memorize the poem. 

The thought of the last stanza is also found in Moore's "Echoes," in 
Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song," and in the last stanzas of 
Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee." 

SIR GALAHAD 

[The legends of King Arthur say that when the knights assembled in 
the great hall at Camelot, they found a vacant seat which was called 
the "Siege Perilous," and on it was a writing which declared that no 
man might sit therein except he should lose himself. The seat remained 
long empty, until, one summer evening, Sir Galahad, the purest and 
most unselfish of King Arthur's knights, came and sat in it, saying, 
"If I lose myself, 1 save myself." 

At that, a peal of thunder sounded, the roof of the hall seemed to 
crack and open, a beam of light shone in, and moving down the beam 
appeared the Holy Grail, surround°d by a shining cloud. The Grail 
was the cup which Jesus and his disciples used at the Last Supper. It 
was said to have been brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea and 
given into the keeping of a company of knights, but the knights were not 
pure, and the Grail vanished. It was said that none might find or look 
upon it who was not pure in heart. 

When the knights who were assembled in King Arthur's hall saw this 
beam of light and the shining cloud, — they did not see the Grail itself ? 
for that was hidden, — many cried out and made a vow that they would 
seek the Grail a twelvemonth and a day. And Galahad also made the 
vow, for he heard a voice which said, "O Galahad, follow me!" 

None of the knights succeeded in recovering the Grail. One saw it 
far off, one saw it covered, but Galahad saw it openly again and again. 



224 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

He followed it day after day, "by bridge and ford, by park and pale," 
and, as he said to Sir Percivale, it never departed from him nor appeared 
covered, as to the other knights, 

. . . but moving with me night and day, 
Fainter by day, but always in the night 
Blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh 
Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top 
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below 
Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode, 
Shattering all evil customs everywhere, 
And passed thro' Pagan realms, and made them mine, 
And clashed with Pagan hordes, and bore them down, 
And broke thro' all, and in the strength of this 
Come victor. 1 

In the following poem Sir Galahad is represented as telling some of 
his experiences while following the quest of the Grail. Express in your 
reading the heroic character of Galahad and the mystery and wonder of 
the things he sees. Note how differently it should be read from the 
"Bugle Song."] 

My good blade carves the casques of men, 

My tough lance thrusteth sure, 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 

Because my heart is pure. 
5 The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, 

The hard brands shiver on the steel, 
The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly, 

The horse and rider reel : 
They reel, they roll in clanging lists, 
10 And when the tide of combat stands, 

Perfume and flowers fall in showers, 

That lightly rain from ladies' hands. 

How sweet are looks that ladies bend 
On whom their favors fall ! 
15 For them I battle till the end, 

To save from shame and thrall : 

1 Tennyson, "The Holy Grail," from "Idylls of the King." 



ALFRED TENNYSON 225 

But all my heart is drawn above, 

My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine : 
I never felt the kiss of love, 

Nor maiden's hand in mind. 
More bounteous aspects on me beam, 5 

Me mightier transports move and thrill ; 
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer 

A virgin heart in work and will. 

When down the stormy crescent goes, 

A light before me swims, 10 

Between dark stems the forest glows, 

I hear a noise of hymns : 
Then by some secret shrine I ride ; 

I hear a voice but none are there ; 
The stalls are void, the doors are wide, 15 

The tapers burning fair. 
Fair gleams the snowy altar cloth, 

The silver vessels sparkle clean, 
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, 

And solemn chaunts resound between. 20 

Sometimes on lonely mountain meres 

I find a magic bark ; 
I leap on board : no helmsman steers : 

I float till all is dark. 
A gentle sound, an awful light ! 25 

Three angels bear the holy Grail : 
With folded feet, in stoles of white, 

On sleeping wings they sail. 
Ah, blessed vision ! blood of God ! 

My spirit beats her mortal bars, 30 

As down dark tides the glory slides, 

And starlike mingles with the stars. 



226 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

When on my goodly charger borne 

Thro' dreaming towns I go, 
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn. 

The streets are dumb with snow. 
5 The tempest crackles on the leads, 

And ringing, springs from brand and mail; 
But o'er the dark a glory spreads, 

And gilds the driving hail* 
I leave the plain, I climb the height ; 
io No branchy thicket shelter yields ; 

But blessed forms in whistling storms 

Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields. 

A maiden knight — to me is given 

Such hope, I know not fear ; 
15 I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven 

That often meet me here. 
I muse on joy that will not cease, 

Pure spaces clothed in living beams, 
Pure lilies of eternal peace, 
20 Whose odors haunt my dreams ; 

And stricken by an angel's hand, 

This mortal armor that I wear, 
This weight and size, this heart and eyes, 

Are touched, are turned to finest air. 

25 The clouds are broken in the sky, 

And thro' the mountain walls 
A rolling organ harmony 

Swells up, and shakes, and falls. 
Then move the trees, the copses nod, 
30 Wings flutter, voices hover clear : 

"O just and faithful knight of God ! 
Ride on ! the prize is near." 



ALFRED TENNYSON 227 

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange ; 

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 
All armed I ride, whate'er betide, 

Until I find the Holy Grail. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell very briefly the legend of the Holy Grail. Why was Sir 
Galahad the only one of the knights who saw it uncovered? 2. What 
gave Galahad such strength and success? 3. Explain "The shattering 
trumpet shrilleth high," "they roll in clanging lists." 4. How were 
the victors in the knightly tournaments rewarded by the ladies (page 224, 
lines 11 and 13) ? The perfume was, of course, the odor of the flowers.' 
5. How did a true knight always treat a lady? 6. Explain "But all 
my heart is drawn above, My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine," 
"More bounteous aspects on me beam," "a virgin heart" {virgin here 
means pure and unspoiled). How did Sir Galahad keep his heart pure 
and unspoiled ? 

7. Explain "When down the stormy crescent goes" (probably the 
setting of the moon on a stormy night), "the stalls are void," "lonely 
mountain meres," "in stoles of white," "blood of God," "My spirit 
beats her mortal bars," "As down dark tides the glory slides," "dreaming 
towns," "The cock crows ere the Christmas morn" (there was an old 
legend that the cocks used to crow all night before Christmas to drive 
away evil spirits), "dumb with snow," "crackles on the leads," "a 
maiden knight," "Are touched, are turned to finest air," "The clouds 
are broken in the sky," "So pass I hostel, hall, and grange," "By bridge 
and ford, by park and pale." 

8. Try to see the pictures in the last five stanzas and feel the mystery 
and beauty of the description. Notice how a great inspiration fills Sir 
Galahad and makes him see things that common, earthly people cannot 
see. 9. Select the lines or stanzas that you especially like. 10. Mem- 
orize the first four lines of the poem and as much more as you would like 
to remember. 

^ You will be interested in parts of "The Holy Grail" in Tennyson's 
"Idylls of the King." For the story of the Grail see Greene's "Legends 
of King Arthur and his Court," Guerber's "Legends of the Middle Ages," 
Darton's "Wonder Book of Old Romance," or Lanier's "The Boy's 
King Arthur" (from Sir Thomas Malory). 



228 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

RING OUT, WILD BELLS 

[These verses are from Canto CVI of "In Memoriam," the poem 
written by Tennyson to commemorate the death of his friend Arthur 
Hallam. "In Memoriam" tells how year by year the poet's grief be- 
came softened as he gradually saw that God was directing all things and 
knew best. At the end of the second year after Hallam's death he hears 
the New Year's bells ringing in the night, and feels that he must look 
forward rather than back into the past. So this ringing of the bells 
seems to bring new life and hope. He wants them to ring out all that 
is sad and harmful and wrong, and to ring in a happier and better time.] 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light : 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

5 Ring out the old, ring in the new, 

Ring, happy bells, across the snow : 
The year is going, let him go ; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
IO For those that here we see no more ; 

Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause, 
And ancient forms of party strife ; 
15 Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 
The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rimes, 
20 But ring the fuller minstrel in. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 229 

Ring out false pride in place and blood, 

The civic slander and the spite ; 

Ring in the love of truth and right, 
Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 5 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 10 

Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. From what longer poem is this selection taken? What is the 
meaning of the title of the longer poem (see Vocabulary), and for what 
purpose was it written? How does this short poem fit into the longer 
one? 2. Think of the picture in the first stanza. What particular 
words add most to the effect of it? 3. Why is the poet glad that a 
new year has come? Find two passages in the poem that refer to his 
sorrow for the death of Hallam. 4. Notice the change in the feeling 
of the bells between the first and second stanzas — "wild bells," "happy 
bells." Why this change ? 

5. Name the unpleasant things that Tennyson wishes the bells to 
ring out. Name the good things that he wishes them to ring in. 6. Ex- 
plain "the feud of rich and poor," "redress to all mankind," "a slowly 
dying cause," "ancient forms of party strife," "the faithless coldness of 
the times." 7. Notice the importance that the poet sees in "sweeter 
manners." Are good manners as important as good laws? What 
do one's manners show of one's heart? 8. Explain "ring the fuller 
minstrel in." What does this show of Tennyson's feeling for his own 
poetry ? 

9. Explain "false pride in place and blood," "civic slander," "the 
narrowing lust of gold." 10. What is being done to conquer "old 



230 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

shapes of foul disease " ? What to end wars and establish peace ? What 
is meant by "the darkness of the land" ? Name some ways in which it 
can be overcome, n. Explain "Ring in the Christ that is to be." 
12. Notice the unusual verse form. What lines in each stanza make 
the rimes? 13. Read again the lines that seem to you the finest. 
14. Memorize the poem. 

Other poems suggested by bells are Poe's "The Bells" (see page 388), 
Longfellow's "Christmas Bells," Schiller's "The Song of the Bell," 
Moore's "Those Evening Bells," Mahony's "The Bells of Shandon." 
Other good New Year's poems are Tennyson's "The Death of the Old 
Year" and Sarah Doudney's "Farewell to the Old Year." 



FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL 

[This simple poem contains a world of thought. The poet plucks a 
little plant, flower and root and all, out of a cranny in the wall and holds 
it in his hand. As he looks at it he thinks that the same laws of nature 
which make the plant grow also govern everything in the universe. 
Life and growth seem so wonderful to him that he exclaims, "If I could 
only know what you are, and all that is in you, I should know all that is 
to be known of God and man."] 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. What is the thought in this poem? 2. Think of the mystery of 
a growing plant or of the life that is in a seed. What other things in 
nature grow according to the same laws? How are they like the plant, 
and how are they different? 3. Memorize the poem, and think of it 
when you see a little plant growing. 4. Find the lines that rime. 

Read the first four stanzas of Wordsworth's "The Primrose of the 
Rock," which contains the same thought. 



ALFRED TENNYSON 231 

CROSSING THE BAR 

[This is perhaps the most beautiful poem ever written about death. 
Tennyson's son has said : 

It was written in my father's eighty-first year, on a day in October when 
we came from Aldworth to Farringford. Before reaching Farringford he had 
the "moaning of the bar" in his mind, and after dinner he showed me this 
poem written out. I said, "This is the crown of your life's work." He an- 
swered, "It came in a moment." He explained the "Pilot" as "That Divine 
and Unseen who is always guiding us." 

Read the poem first for the beauty of the picture and the music of 
the verse. Then read it again to see what Tennyson meant. He felt 
that he was soon to die, but he was happy in the thought. The earth 
seemed to him like a quiet harbor. He had sailed into it when an infant, 
on the tide from the great ocean of Eternity, the boundless ; now it was 
time for the tide to turn and take him back home. He hears the call, 
he sees the sunset, the twilight, the evening star, and he is ready to put 
out to sea. But as his little vessel crosses the harbor bar — by which 
he means death — he wishes to hear no moaning or sound of sadness ; 
he wants the tide to be so full and deep that it will bear him quietly 
over the bar without the sound of waves, for just outside he expects to 
meet his Pilot, God.] 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me : 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark ; 



232 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Under what circumstances was this poem written? 2. Explain 
the meaning of it. 3. For what do the following words or pictures 
stand, in Tennyson's thought: the sunset, the bar, the sea, the Pilot? 
4. Notice the peace and beauty of the picture. Notice also how it 
changes from line to line — sunset, the evening star, twilight, the bell, 
the darkness, then the joy of meeting the Pilot. 5. Explain the thought 
in "When that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again 
home." Where does the poet consider his home to be? 6. W T hat is 
meant by "our bourne of Time and Place"? 

Other peaceful pictures of death are Bryant's "Thanatopsis," Whit- 
tier's "The Eternal Goodness," Emerson's "Terminus," Mrs. Barbauld's 
"Life, I Know not What Thou Art," the Twenty-third Psalm beginning 
"Yea, though I wa ] k," and the fourteenth chapter of St. John. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

1811-1863 

The two great story-writers of Queen Victoria's reign — 
Thackeray and Dickens — were of almost the same age, 
Thackeray being but six months the elder. He was the only 
child of Richmond Thackeray, an English government official 
in India, and was born in Calcutta in the summer of 181 1. 

When the boy was five years old, he lost his father, and 
about a year later was sent to England, under the care of a 
family servant, to enter school. It was a long journey for a 
boy of six, but the Indian climate is hard for English children 
to endure, and there were then no good schools in India, so 
it had become the custom among the English residents of the 
country to send their children to England at an early age. 
" Billy-boy," as he was called by the family, had an interesting 
voyage and remembered some things about it which he was 
able to tell to his own children years afterwards. For instance, 
the ship put in for a few hours at St. Helena, and the servant 
took him ashore and up over the rocks to a little garden 
where a man was walking alone. The servant whispered that 
it was Napoleon Bonaparte, a famous soldier, and that he 
was in the habit of eating little children. The first part of 
the story was true, the second was not, but little Billy-boy 
believed it all and made what haste he could to get back to 
the ship. 

The first school which he entered was in Hampshire, but 
he did not stay there long. The second was a " boarding 
school for young gentlemen," at Chiswick on the Thames. 
This was presided over by an awe-inspiring doctor, who used 

233 



234 NINETEENTH CENTURY - ENGLISH 

high-sounding words and appeared exceedingly learned. The 
lonely boy from India did not like this school, and afterwards 
confessed that he once started to run away, but did not 
know where to go ; consequently, when he came to the great 
Hammersmith road he turned around and went back, and no 
one ever guessed the plot that had been in his heart. His 
holidays were spent with his grandmother and two aunts, who 
were kind to him and made him such a home as they could. 

When William was nine or ten, his mother, who had married 
again in India, came to England with his stepfather. This 
stepfather was an English army officer in the Indian service, 
Major Carmichael-Smyth. He was a kind and generous man, 
and young Thackeray soon came to love him greatly. You 
may be sure also that after these years of separation it was a 
great joy for the boy to be with his mother once more. 

At eleven he was sent to Charterhouse, a famous old school 
in London, where Addison and Steele and other great men of 
former times had lived and studied. But Thackeray did not 
like Charterhouse much better than Chiswick. He called 
it " Slaughterhouse," and from some of the stories which we 
have of fights and brawls among the boys, perhaps the name 
was fairly descriptive. In later life he thought more kindly 
of the old place and described it in "The Newcomes" as Grey 
Friars. 

Thackeray went from Charterhouse to Cambridge and 
entered the university. There he met Tennyson and made 
other friends, but he did not stay to finish his course. He 
felt that he was wasting time, and after somewhat more than 
a year he left and went to Germany, where he studied a little, 
read a great deal, lived at Weimar, and met Goethe. 

Then he returned to London and decided to study law, 
but he soon found that he was not fitted to be a lawyer. In 
"Pendennis" he tells us something about the London law 
courts of those days and how they impressed him. After 
giving up the law he came into possession of some property 



236 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

that his father had left him, and bought a paper, which he 
managed for a time, until he had lost all that he had put 
into it and found himself in debt. 

What should he do next? He had tried law; he had 
tried literature ; he had failed in both. From his childhood 
he had possessed a strong talent for drawing, and it now 
occurred to him that he could put this to good use. So he 
went to Paris and studied art. While there he earned a small 
salary as a newspaper correspondent and married. Nearly a 
year was spent in Paris; then the newspaper which em- 
ployed him failed, and he came back to London with his young 
wife, very poor and with nothing to live upon. 

Dickens had just written " Pickwick Papers" and was in 
the first flush of his fame. Thackeray went to him and tried 
to obtain the work of illustrating the book, but Dickens 
thought the drawings not so good as those which others had 
offered. Thackeray then made drawings and wrote articles 
for Fraser's Magazine and Punch. 

During these years he lived in a modest house in London 
with his wife and two little daughters, and though poor was 
very happy. But after a time his wife became ill and finally 
lost her reason ; the home was broken up, and for some years 
the children lived with their grandparents in Paris while 
Thackeray worked on alone in London. He worked hard and 
at last was able to have his family with him again, "if," as 
his daughter says, "a house, two young children, three 
servants, and a little black cat can be called a family." 

The years that followed show us Thackeray at his best. 
He lived for his two children. He played with them and joked 
with them and drew comic pictures for them and took them 
on excursions. Some have wondered how he ever found time 
to write his novels, but he did, in some way. A letter which 
he wrote about this time tells of one day's doings : 

Yesterday was my dear little M 's birthday, and we had 

a day of heat and idleness at Hampton Court, finished with a 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 237 

cold collation at Mrs. Barber's at Twickenham, where all the 
ladies assembled were excellently kind to the children. The 
pictures did not charm them over much, but the palace of Moor- 
shedabad with a little palanquin, elephants, beavers, two inches 
high, delighted them hugely, and so did the labyrinth and the 
chestnut trees in full bloom and the gardens all over green and 
sunshine. We all went to bed very tired and sober at ten o'clock. 

It was during these years that Thackeray wrote his first 
great novel, " Vanity Fair." It was published in twenty-four 
parts, each bound in yellow paper, and the parts were issued 
monthly. At first it did not sell. Thackeray thought that 
this too was to be a failure, like so many of his other efforts, 
but before the last number was out all England was reading 
it, and Thackeray was almost as popular as Dickens. As a 
literary artist he is probably the greater of the two. 

" Vanity Fair" was followed by "Pendennis," "Henry 
Esmond," "The Newcomes," and "The Virginians." Then 
their author gave lectures throughout England, Scotland, and 
America on "English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century" 
and "The Four Georges." He also became editor of the 
Cornhill Magazine, which prospered under his management. 
He was adding each year to his fame and usefulness, when he 
died suddenly on Christmas Eve of the year 1863. 

A VIRGINIAN WITH BRADDOCK'S EXPEDITION 

["The Virginians" tells the story of two brothers, George and Harry 
Warrington, sons of Madam Esmond Warrington of Castlewood , Virginia. 
The Warringtons are supposed to have been friends of Washington, and 
the elder is represented as having been one of General Braddock's aids 
on that ill-fated expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1775.] 

I 
We must fancy that the parting between the brothers is 
over, that George has taken his place in Mr. Braddock's 



238 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

family, and Harry has returned home to Castlewood and his 
duty. His heart is with the army, and his pursuits at home 
offer the boy no pleasure. He does not care to own how deep 
his disappointment is at being obliged to stay under the 

5 homely, quiet roof, now more melancholy than ever, since 
George is away. Harry passes his brother's empty chamber 
with an averted face, takes George's place at the head of the 
table, and sighs as he drinks from his silver tankard. Madam 
Warrington insists on talking about George constantly, but 

10 quite cheerfully, and as if his return was certain. She walks 
into his vacant room with head upright and no outward signs 
of emotion. She sees that his books, linen, papers, etc., 
are arranged with care, talking of him with a very special 
respect and specially appealing to the old servants at meals 

15 and so forth regarding things which are to be done "when 
Mr. George comes home." . . . 

The whole land was now lying parched and scorching in 
the July heat. For ten days no news had come from the 
column advancing on the Ohio. Their march, though it 

20 toiled but slowly through the painful forest, must bring them 
ere long up with the enemy ; the troops, led by consummate 
captains, were accustomed now to the wilderness and not 
afraid of surprise. Every precaution had been taken against 
ambush. It was the outlying enemy who were discovered, 

25 pursued, destroyed, by the vigilant scouts and skirmishers of 
the British force. The last news heard was that the army had 
advanced considerably beyond the ground of Mr. Washington's 
discomfiture in the previous year, and two days after must be 
within a day's march of the French fort. . . . 

30 But on the tenth of July a vast and sudden gloom spread 
over the province. A look of terror and doubt seemed to fall 
upon every face. Affrighted negroes wistfully eyed their 
masters and retired and hummed and whispered with one 
another. The fiddles ceased in the quarters; the song and 

3 S laugh of those cheery black folk were hushed. Right and 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 239 

left everybody's servants were on the gallop for news. The 
country taverns were thronged with horsemen, who drank and 
cursed and brawled at the bars, each bringing his gloomy story. 
The army had been surprised. The troops had fallen into an 
ambuscade and had been cut up almost to a man. All the 5 
officers were taken down by the French marksmen and the 
savages. The General had been wounded and carried off 
the field in his sash. *Four days afterwards the report was 
that the General was dead and scalped by a French 
Indian. 10 

Ah, what a scream poor Mrs. Mountain gave, when Gumbo 
brought this news from across the James River, and little 
Fanny sprang crying to her mother's arms! "Lord God 
Almighty, watch over us and defend my boy !" said Mrs. Es- 
mond, sinking down on her knees and lifting her rigid hands 15 
to heaven. The gentlemen were not at home when this rumor 
arrived, but they came in an hour or two afterwards, each 
from his hunt for news. Harry Warrington was as pale as his 
mother. It might not be true about the manner of the 
General's death — but he was dead. The army had been 20 
surprised by Indians and had fled and been killed without 
seeing the enemy. An express had arrived from Dunbar's 
camp. Fugitives were pouring in there. Should he go and 
see? He must go and see. He and stout little Dempster 
armed themselves and mounted, taking a couple of mounted 25 
servants with them. 

They followed the northward track which the expeditionary 
army had hewed out for itself, and at every step which brought 
them nearer to the scene of action the disaster of the fearful 
day seemed to magnify. The day after the defeat a number of 30 
the miserable fugitives from the fatal battle of the ninth of 
July had reached Dunbar's camp, fifty miles from the field. 
Thither poor Harry and his companions rode, stopping 
stragglers, asking news, giving money, getting from one and all 
the same gloomy tale — a thousand men were slain — two 35 



240 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

thirds of the officers were down — all the General's aids-de- 
camp were hit — were hit ? — but were they killed ? Those 
who fell never rose again. The tomahawk did its work upon 
them. . . . 

5 At every step which Harry Warrington took towards 
Pennsylvania the reports of the British disaster were magnified 
and confirmed. Those two famous regiments which had 
fought in the Scottish and Continental wars had fled from an 
enemy almost unseen, and their boasted discipline and valor 

iohad not enabled them to face a band of savages and a few 
French infantry. The unfortunate commander of the expedi- 
tion had shown the utmost bravery and resolution. Four 
times his horse had been shot under him. Twice he had been 
wounded, and the last time, of the mortal hurt which ended 

15 his life three days after the battle. More than one of Harry's 
informants described to the poor lad the action — the passage 
of the river, the long line of advance through the wilderness, 
the firing in front, the vain struggle of the men to advance and 
the artillery to clear the way of the enemy; then the am- 

20 bushed fire from behind every bush and tree, and the murder- 
ous fusillade, by which at least half of the expeditionary force 
had been shot down. But not all the General's suite were 
killed, Harry heard. One of his aids-de-camp, a Virginian 
gentleman, was ill of fever and exhaustion at Dunbar's 

25 camp. 

One of them — but which ? To the camp Harry hurried 
and reached it at length. It was George Washington Harry 
found stretched in a tent there, and not his brother. A 
sharper pain than that of the fever Mr. Washington declared 

30 he felt when he saw Harry Warrington and could give him no 
news of George. 

Mr. Washington did not dare to tell Harry all. For three 
days after the fight his duty had been to be near the General. 
On the fatal ninth of July he had seen George go to the front 

35 with orders from the chief, to whose side he never returned. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 241 

After Braddock himself died, the aid-de-camp had found 
means to retrace his course to the field. The corpses which 
remained there were stripped and horribly mutilated. One 
body he buried which he thought to be George Warrington's. 
His own illness was increased, perhaps occasioned, by the 5 
anguish which he underwent in his search for the unhappy 
young volunteer. 

Nothing would satisfy Harry but that he, too, should go to 
the ground and examine it. With money he procured a guide 
or two. He forded the river at the place where the army had 10 
passed over ; he went from one end to the other of the dreadful 
field. It was no longer haunted by Indians. Save in his own 
grandfather, lying very calm with a sweet smile on his lip, 
Harry had never yet seen the face of Death. The horrible 
spectacle of mutilation caused him to turn away with shudder 15 
and loathing. He was for going, unarmed and with a white 
flag, to the French fort, whither, after their victory, the enemy 
had returned; but his guides refused to advance with him. 
The French might possibly respect them but the Indians would 
not. "Keep your hair for your lady-mother, my young 20 
gentleman," said the guide. "Tis enough that she loses one 
son in this campaign." 

WTien Harry returned to the English encampment at Dun- 
bar's it was his turn to be down with the fever. Delirium 
set in upon him, and he lay some time in the tent and on the 25 
bed from which his friend had just risen convalescent. For 
some days he did not know who watched him; and poor 
Dempster, who had tended him in more than one of these 
maladies, thought the widow must lose both her children; 
but the fever was so far subdued that the boy was enabled 30 
to rally somewhat and get to horseback. *Mr. Washington 
and Dempster both escorted him home. It was with a heavy 
heart, no doubt, that all three beheld once more the gates of 
Castlewood. 



242 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

II 

[Harry Warrington's fever returned again and again, and his family- 
were exceedingly anxious about him. At length it was determined that 
he should go to England, in the hope that the sea air would benefit him. 
In England he regained his health, but fell among wild companions, spent 
all his money, and was then thrown into jail for debt. In the midst of 
his troubles a visitor from America found his way into the jail, paid his 
debts, and released him. When Harry saw the traveler he was almost 
overcome with astonishment. It was his brother George. And this 
is the story which George told.] 

I was with our General with the main body of the troops 
when the firing began in front of us, and one aid-de-camp 
after another was sent forwards. At first the enemy's attack 
was answered briskly by our own advanced people, and our 

5 men huzza'd and cheered with good heart. But very soon our 
fire grew slacker, whilst from behind every tree and bush 
round about us came single shots, which laid man after man 
low. We were marching in orderly line, the skirmishers in 
front, the colors and two of our small guns in the center, the 

10 baggage, well guarded, bringing up the rear, and were moving 
over a ground which was open and clear for a mile or two and 
for some half mile in breadth, a thick tangled covert of brush- 
wood and trees on either side of us. After the firing had con- 
tinued for some brief time in front, it opened from both sides 

is of the environing wood on our advancing column. The men 
dropped rapidly, the officers in greater number than the men. 
At first, as I said, these cheered and answered the enemy's fire, 
our guns even opening on the wood and seeming to silence the 
French in ambuscade there. But the hidden rifle firing began 

20 again. Our men halted, huddled up together, in spite of the 
shouts and orders of the General and officers to advance, and 
fired wildly into the brushwood — of course making no im- 
pression. Those in advance came running back on the main 
body, frightened and many of them wounded. They reported 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 243 

there were five thousand Frenchmen and a legion of yelling 
Indian devils in front, who were scalping our people as they 
fell. We could hear their cries from the wood around as our 
men dropped under their rifles. There was no inducing the 
people to go forward now. One aid-de-camp after another 5 
was sent forward and never returned. At last it came to be 
my turn, and I was sent with a message to Captain Fraser of 
Halkett's in front, which he was never to receive nor I to 
deliver. 

I had not gone thirty yards in advance when a rifle ball 10 
struck my leg, and I fell straightway to the ground. I recol- 
lect a rush forward of Indians and Frenchmen after that, the 
former crying their fiendish war cries, the latter as fierce as 
their savage allies. 

One of them, who was half Indian, half Frenchman, with 15 
moccasins and a white uniform coat and cockade, seeing me 
prostrate on the ground, turned back and ran towards me, his 
musket clubbed over his head to dash my brains out and 
plunder me as I lay. I had my little fusil which my Harry 
gave me when I went on the campaign ; it had fallen by me 20 
and within my reach, luckily. I seized it, and down fell the 
Frenchman dead at six yards before me. I was saved for 
that time, but bleeding from my wound and very faint. I 
swooned almost in trying to load my piece, and it dropped from 
my hand, and the hand itself sank lifeless to the ground. 25 

I was scarcely in my senses, the yells and shots ringing 
dimly in my ears, when I saw an Indian before me, busied 
over the body of the Frenchman I had just shot, but glancing 
towards me as I lay on the ground bleeding. He first rifled 
the Frenchman, tearing open his coat and feeling in his pockets. 30 
He then scalped him, and with his knife in his mouth advanced 
towards me. I saw him coming, as through a film, as in a 
dream. I was powerless to move or to resist him. 

He put his knee upon my chest ; with one hand he seized 
my long hair and lifted my head from the ground, and as he 35 



244 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

lifted it, he enabled me to see a French officer rapidly advancing 
behind him. 

It was young Florae, who was my second in the duel at 
Quebec. " A moi, Florae!" I cried out. "C'est Georges !" 
s He started, ran up to me at the cry, laid his hand on the 
Indian's shoulder, and called him to hold. But the savage did 
not understand French, or choose to understand it. He 
clutched my hair, and waving his knife round it, motioned to 
the French lad to leave him to his prey. 

10 "Take that!" said Florae, and the next moment, and with 
an ugh, the Indian fell over my chest dead, with Florae's 
sword through his body. 

My friend looked round him. "Eh!" says he. "Where 
art thou wounded? in the leg ? " He bound my leg tight with 

is his sash. "The others will kill thee if they find thee here. 
Put on this coat, and this hat with the white cockade. Call 
out in French if any of our people pass. They will take thee 
for one of us. Thou art Brunet of the Quebec Volunteers. 
God guard thee, Brunet ! I must go forward. The whole of 

20 your redcoats are on the run, my poor boy." 

Florae's rough application stopped the bleeding of my leg, 
and the kind creature helped me to rest against a tree and to 
load my fusil, which he placed within reach of me, to protect 
me in case any other marauder should have a mind to attack 

25 me. And he gave me the gourd of that unlucky French soldier 
who had lost his own life in the deadly game which he had just 
played against me, and the drink the gourd contained served 
greatly to refresh and invigorate me. Taking a mark of the 
tree against which I lay and noting the various bearings of 

30 the country, so as to be able again to find me, the young lad 
hastened on to the front. 

At evening, when the dismal pursuit was over, the faithful 
fellow came back to me with a couple of Indians, who had each 
reeking scalps at their belts and whom he informed that I was 

35 a Frenchman, his brother, who had been wounded early in 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 245 

the day and must be carried back to the fort. They laid me 
in one of their blankets and carried me, groaning, with the 
trusty Florae by my side. Had he left me, they would 
assuredly have laid me down, plundered me, and added my 
hair to that of the wretches whose bleeding spoils hung at their 5 
girdles. I have but a dim recollection of the journey; the 
anguish of my wound was extreme ; I fainted more than once. 
We came to the end of our march at last. I was taken into 
the fort and carried to the officer's log house and laid upon 
Florae's own bed. 10 

I know not how long I lay in my fever. When I awoke to 
my senses my dear Florae was gone. He and his company 
had been dispatched on an enterprise against an English fort 
on the Pennsylvanian territory, which the French claimed, too. 

My old enemy the ague fever set in again upon me as 1 15 
lay here by the riverside. 'Tis a wonder how I ever survived. 
But for the goodness of a half-breed woman in the fort, who 
took pity on me and tended me, I never should have recovered, 
and my poor Harry would be what he fancied himself yester- 
day, our grandfather's heir, our mother's only son. 20 

I remembered how, when Florae laid me in his bed, he put 
under my pillow my money, my watch, and a trinket or two 
which I had. When I woke to myself these were all gone; 
and a surly old sergeant, the only officer left in the quarter, 
told me, with a curse, that I was lucky enough to be left with 25 
my life at all ; that it was only my white cockade and coat 
had saved me from the fate which the other canaille of Rosbifs 
had deservedly met with. 

At the time of my recovery the fort was almost emptied 
of the garrison. The Indians had retired, enriched with 30 
British plunder, and the chief part of the French regulars 
were gone upon expeditions northward, leaving an old lieu- 
tenant, Museau by name, in command at Duquesne. He 
was the husband of the half-breed woman who had nursed 
me. . . . 35 



246 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

We continued for months our weary life at the fort, and 
the commandant and I had our quarrels and reconciliations, 
our greasy games at cards, our dismal duets with his asthmatic 
flute and my cracked guitar. The poor half-breed, who was 

5 called "the Fawn," took her beatings and her cans of liquor 
as her lord and master chose to administer them ; and she 
nursed her papoose, or her master in the gout, or her prisoner 
in the ague ; and so matters went on until the beginning of the 
fall of last year, when we were visited by a hunter who had 

10 important news to deliver to the commandant, and such as 
set the little garrison in no little excitement. The Marquis de 
Montcalm had sent a considerable detachment to garrison 
the forts already in the French hands and to take up farther 
positions in the enemy's — that is, in the British — posses- 

15 sions. The troops had left Quebec and Montreal and were 
coming up the St. Lawrence and the lakes in bateaux, with 
artillery and large provisions of warlike and other stores. 
Museau would be superseded in his command by an officer of 
superior rank, who might exchange me or who might give me 

20 up to the Indians in reprisal for cruelties practiced by our own 
people on many and many an officer and soldier of the enemy. 
Somehow, the prospect did not add to Mr. Museau's satis- 
faction. "Yes, 'tis all very well, my garcon," says he. "But 
where will you be when poor old Museau is superseded? 

25 Other officers are not good companions like me. Thou wilt 
be kept in a sty like a pig ready for killing." 

"I will give the guide who takes me home a large reward," 
said I. "And I promise, as a man of honor, ten thousand 
livres to — whom shall I say ? to any one who shall bring me 

30 any token — who shall bring me, say, my watch and seal with 
my grandfather's arms — which I have seen in a chest some- 
where in this fort." 

"Ah!" roars out the commandant, with a hoarse yell of 
laughter. "Thou hast eyes, thou! All is good prize in 

35 war." 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 247 

For want of better things to do, I was often singing and 
guitar-scraping; and we would have many a concert, the 
men joining in chorus or dancing to my homely music until it 
was interrupted by the drums and the retraite. Our guest, 
the hunter, was present at one or two of these concerts, and 5 
I thought I would try if possibly he understood English. After 
we had had our little stock of French songs I said, "My lads, 
I will give you an English song," and to the tune of "Over the 
hills and far away," which my good old grandfather used to 
hum as a favorite air in Marlborough's camp, I made some 10 
doggerel words: — "This long long year, a prisoner drear; 
Ah, me ! I'm tired of lingering here. I'll give a hundred 
guineas gay, To be over the hills and far away." 

"What is it?" says the hunter. "I don't understand." 

"'Tis a girl to her lover," I answered; but I saw by the 15 
twinkle in the man's eye that he understood me. 

The next day, when there were no men within hearing, the 
trapper showed that I was right in my conjecture, for as he 
passed me he hummed in a low tone, but in perfectly good 
English, "Over the hills and far away," the burden of my 20 
yesterday's doggerel. 

"If you are ready," says he, "I am ready. I know who 
your people are, and the way to them. Talk to the Fawn, and 
she will tell you what to do. — What! You will not play 
with me?" Here he pulled out some cards and spoke in 25 
French, as two soldiers came up. 

And the man made me a mock bow, and walked away 
shrugging up his shoulders. 

I knew now that the Fawn was to be the agent in the affair 
and that my offer to Museau was accepted. Having gambled 30 
away most of the money which he received for his peltries, 
the trapper now got together his store of flints, powder, and 
blankets, and took his leave. And three days after his 
departure the Fawn gave me the signal that the time was 
come for me to make my little trial for freedom. 35 



248 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Looking westward over a gun upon the bastion behind my 
cabin, you could see a small island at the confluence of the 
two rivers Ohio and Monongahela, whereon Duquesne is 
situated. On the shore opposite this island were some trees. 

5 "You see those trees?" the poor Fawn said to me in her 

French jargon. "He wait for you behind those trees." . . . 

The night was so rainy that the sentries preferred their 

boxes and did not disturb me in my work. The log house 

was built with upright posts, deeply fixed in the ground, and 

10 horizontal logs laid upon them. I had to dig under these and 
work a hole sufficient to admit my body to pass. I began in 
the dark, soon after tattoo. It was some while after midnight 
before my work was done, when I lifted my hand up under the 
log and felt the rain from without falling upon it. I had to 

15 work very cautiously for two hours after that, and then crept 
through to the parapet and silently flung my rope over the 
gun, not without a little tremor of heart, lest the sentry should 
see me and send a charge of lead into my body. 

The wall was but twelve feet, and my fall into the ditch 

20 easy enough. I waited awhile there, looking steadily under 
the gun and trying to see the river and the island. I heard 
the sentry pacing up above and humming a tune. The dark- 
ness became more clear to me ere long, and the moon rose, 
and I saw the river shining before me, and the dark rocks and 

25 trees of the island rising in the waters. 

I made for this mark as swiftly as I could, and for the 
clump of trees to which I had been directed. Oh, what a 
relief I had when I heard a low voice humming there, "Over 
the hills and far away!" 

30 Our way lay through a level tract of forest, with which 
my guide was familiar, upon the right bank of the Mononga- 
hela. By daylight we came to a clearer country, and my 
trapper asked me — Silverheels was the name by which he 
went — had I ever seen the spot before ? It was the fatal 

35 field where Braddock had fallen and whence I had been 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 249 

wonderfully rescued in the summer of the previous year. We 
presently crossed the river, taking our course along the base 
of the western slopes of the Alleghenies, and through a grand 
forest region of oaks and maples and enormous poplars that 
grow a hundred feet high without a branch. 5 

I was but weak still, and our journey through the wilderness 
lasted a fortnight or more. As we advanced, the woods 
became • redder and redder. The frost nipped sharply of 
nights. We lighted fires at our feet and slept in our blankets 
as best we might. We came upon hunters camping by the 10 
mountain streams, and they welcomed us at their fires and 
gave us of their venison. So we passed over the two ranges of 
the Laurel Hills and the Alleghenies, and descended to Cum- 
berland, whence we had marched in the year before and 
where there was now a considerable garrison of our people. 15 
Oh, you may think it was a welcome day when I saw Eng- 
lish colors again on the banks of our native Potomac ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Thackeray's life. From what book is this 
selection taken? 2. Give a short account of Braddock's Expedition, 
telling when it occurred and what was its object. 3. What is meant 
by "Mr. Braddock's family"? Explain " averted face," " consummate 
captains," "ambush/' "quarters," "ambuscade." 4. What is meant by 
"Mr. Washington's discomfiture in the previous year"? Explain "an 
express had arrived," "the General's aids-de-camp," "ambushed fire," 
"murderous fusillade," "the General's suite." 5. Tell briefly the chief 
events of Washington's life up to the time of this expedition. 

6. Explain the remark of the guide, "Keep your hair for your lady- 
mother." Explain "Delirium set in upon him." Define "convales- 
cent," "maladies." 7. Explain why the brave and seasoned troops 
of Braddock should have been so panic-stricken. 8. What is a white 
cockade, and what did it signify? What is a fusil? 9. What is the 
meaning of the French words which George cried out to Florae? ("A 
moi" [pronounced a mwa] means "come to me," or "help me." 
"C'est Georges" [pronounced sa Zhdrzh] means "it is George.") 



250 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

George had been in Quebec some time before and had made the acquaint- 
ance of a number of the French officers there. 

10. Explain "Thou art Brunet [pronounced Bru-na] of the Quebec 
Volunteers." What is a marauder? n. Explain "gourd." How was 
it here used? Explain "the other canaille of Rosbifs." (See Vocabu- 
lary.) 12. Who was the Marquis de Montcalm? Explain "comman- 
dant," "asthmatic," "bateaux," "reprisal," "garcon," "ten thousand 
livres." 13. Was George justified in bribing Museau ? What does the 
remark about the watch show of Museau's character? 14. Explain 
"in Marlborough's camp," "doggerel," "peltries," "flints," "bastion," 
"confluence," "tattoo," "parapet." 

15. Notice the vivid pictures that are found in this story: (a) the 
receipt of the news of Braddock's disaster, (6) Harry's search for his 
brother, (c) the ambuscade of Braddock's troops, (d) George's rescue 
by Florae, (e) George's effort to gain the attention of the hunter, (/) the 
escape, (g) the frosty nights in the hunters' camps. Are there others 
that have attracted you ? Which do you think the finest ? 

The simplest introduction to Thackeray is "The Rose and the Ring," 
a comic extravaganza. His other books, except for occasional descrip- 
tions of situations, are rather too advanced for reading below the high 
school. 



CHARLES DICKENS 

1812-1870 

A little less than a century ago a traveler in London, 
turning out of Fleet Street toward the Thames and going 
down a narrow alley and a rickety flight of stairs, would 
have found, on the water's edge, an old warehouse, dirty, 
decayed, and infested with rats. Here a number of boys were 
at work from early morning until eight o'clock at night, filling 
small stone pots with blacking and pasting labels upon them. 
They each received for their work about six shillings, or a 
dollar and a half, a week. 

One of the boys, a thin little fellow some ten years of age, 
looked as if he had never had enough to eat. Sometimes, 
too, while at his work, he would be seized with spasms which 
made him ill for hours. This poor, neglected boy among the 
blacking pots was Charles Dickens, who later became the most 
popular novelist of his time. 

He had not always been so wretched. His earliest years 
were spent at Portsea, a town on Portsmouth harbor, where 
his father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the navy office. 
From there the father was transferred to London and after- 
wards to Chatham. At Chatham Charles went to school 
for a few years, with his older sister Fanny, and when at home 
he spent long hours in a little room full of books which belonged 
to his father. Among the books that he read oftenest were 
"The Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote," and some of the old 
English novels. There he wrote a tragedy and acted it. He 
was always passionately fond of acting and at one time 
thought of giving up his life to it. His parents did not seem 

251 



252 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

to care much what he did. John Dickens, though kind- 
hearted, was too full of large visionary plans ever to get down 
to hard work ; Mrs. Dickens thought that if she could find 
food and clothing for the children — of whom there were now 
six — she was doing her full duty to them. Consequently 
the children just grew. Dickens, late in life, told Washington 
Irving that he thought of himself in those early years as "a 
very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." 

Things went from bad to worse. When Charles was nine 
the family returned to London and went to live in a wretched 
little house in the outskirts of the city — but even there 
the elder Dickens could not pay his rent. The books that 
had given Charles so many happy hours were taken one by 
one to the pawnbroker's, the furniture was sold piece by piece, 
and at last John Dickens himself was taken away by the 
bailiff's officers and put into the debtors' prison — for at 
that time there was a peculiar custom in England of shutting 
a man up in prison when he could not pay his debts, and in that 
way removing the chance of his ever being able to pay them. 

It was during these years that the boy Charles Dickens 
went to work in the blacking factory. The rest of the family 
after a time lived in the prison with the father, but Charles, 
being the eldest son, having now arrived at the mature age 
of ten, and earning a salary of six shillings a week, was expected 
to take care of himself. He says of these years : 

When I had money enough I used to get half a pint of ready- 
made coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When I had none 
I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet street ; or I have strolled 
at such a time as far as Covent Garden Market and stared at the 
pineapples. ... I know that I worked from morning until night 
with common men and boys, a shabby child . . . insufficiently 
and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, 
I might easily have been a little robber or a little vagabond. 

But this hard life seemed to bring out all the strength of 
character that there was in the boy. It made him self-reliant 



254 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

and fixed in him the determination to do something better 
than the people around him were doing. 

John Dickens got out of prison almost by a miracle. A 
relative died and left him some money — enough to pay his 
debts and send the children to school again for a short time. 
The school which Charles attended was probably a little 
worse than no school at all. It was a combination of Creakle's 
school in "David Copperfield" and Squeers's school in 
" Nicholas Nickleby." 

At fourteen young Dickens again set out to earn his own 
way and for about two years served as a lawyer's clerk. In 
the meantime his father had learned shorthand and was 
reporting speeches in Parliament. This paid better than 
copying law papers, and the boy determined to try it himself. 
He mastered the shorthand, but felt that he needed a better 
general education, and accordingly spent all his spare hours 
reading in the library of the British Museum. 

As a reporter he was very successful. He had learned to 
work, and he never spared himself; he learned also that 
absolute accuracy was necessary to success, and he was never 
satisfied to let the slightest error pass into his notes. Writing 
afterwards of those times, he says : 

I have often transcribed for the printer from my shorthand 
notes important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy 
was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young 
man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand by 
the light of a dark lantern in a post chaise and four, galloping 
through a wild country and through the dead of the night, at the 
then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . Returning 
home from excited political meetings in the country to the waiting 
press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost 
every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been 
in my time belated on miry byroads towards the small hours, 
forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage with ex- 
hausted horses and drunken postboys, and have got back in time 
for publication. 



CHARLES DICKENS 255 

In all his work as a reporter Dickens was intensely interested 
in people. He wrote sketches of queer characters whom he 
met on the streets or in the stagecoach or at the inn, and these 
sketches, which he signed "Boz," began to attract as much 
attention as the reports of speeches and political meetings. 
After a time he gathered them together and published them in 
book form, calling them "Sketches by Boz." This was in 
1836, when he was twenty-four. 

" Sketches by Boz" was so popular that he followed it the 
next year with " Pickwick Papers," and " Pickwick Papers" 
made him famous. He gave up his newspaper work, married, 
and settled down to the life of a novelist. "Oliver Twist" 
was his next story; then came "Nicholas Nickleby" and 
"Old Curiosity Shop." 

He made two visits to America, the first in 1842 and the 
other about twenty-five years later. On both occasions he 
was received with high honor. He loved to give public 
readings from his novels, and as he had much dramatic ability, 
these readings became very popular and added to his fame and 
wealth. 

When Dickens began to think of buying a home he re- 
membered a house near Chatham called Gadshill Place, which 
he had always admired greatly in the days when he was small. 
He remembered many a Sunday walk which he had taken with 
his father to see it, and he remembered vividly that his father, 
seeing how fond he was of it, had once said to him, "If you 
were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you 
might some day come to live in it." That thought had stayed 
with him. He had been very persevering, he had worked hard, 
and now why shouldn't he make his dream come true? He 
bought the house, and the happiest years of his life were 
spent at Gadshill with his children around him. 

"David Copperfield," "Bleak House," "Little Dorrit," "A 
Tale of Two Cities," "Our Mutual Friend," and a number of 
other novels were written in the fifteen years between "1850 



256 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

and 1865, but toward the end of that time it became evident 
that Dickens was wearing himself out. In 1870 he died sud- 
denly in the midst of his work. 

THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE 

[The Bastille was a celebrated castle in Paris, the oldest part of which 
was built in the fourteenth century and long used as a dungeon for state 
prisoners. At the outbreak of the French Revolution it was one of the 
first places attacked by the mob. It was in the district known as Saint 
Antoine. 

The storming of the Bastille occurred on July 14, 1789. The governor 
of the castle, with a handful of Swiss guards, resisted the mob for a time, 
but the doors were at length battered in and the prisoners released and 
carried through the streets in triumph. A year later the castle itself 
was torn down. A bronze column has since been set up to mark its site. 

This vivid description of the attack is taken from "A Tale of Two 
Cities," one of the strongest of Dickens's novels.] 

Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of 
scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light 
above the billowy heads where steel blades and bayonets shone 
in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of 

5 Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air 
like shriveled branches of trees in a winter wind, all the fingers 
convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a 
weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter 
how far off. 

o Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they 
began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and 
jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like 
a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told ; 
but muskets were being distributed — so were cartridges, 

i 5 powder and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, 
every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or 
devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else set them- 
selves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of 



CHARLES DICKENS 257 

their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint An- 
toine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every 
living creature there held life as of no account and was de- 
mented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it. 

As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a center point, so alls 
this raging circled round Defarge's wine shop, and every 
human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked 
towards the vortex, where Defarge himself, already begrimed 
with gunpowder and sweat,, issued orders, issued arms, thrust 
this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to 10 
arm another, labored and strove in the thickest of the uproar. 

"Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and 
do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves 
at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where 
is my wife?" 15 

"Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame, composed 
as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right 
hand was occupied with an ax in place of the usual softer 
implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife. 

"Where do you go, my wife? " 20 

"I go," said madame, "with you, at present. You shall 
see me at the head of women by and by." 

"Come, then!" cried Defarge in a resounding voice. 
"Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!" 

With a roar that sounded as if all the breath of France 25 
had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, 
wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to 
that point. Alarm bells ringing, drums beating, the sea 
raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack begun. 

Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, 30 
.eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire, and smoke. 
Through the fire and through the smoke — in the fire and 
in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and 
on the instant he became a cannoneer — Defarge of the wine 
shop worked like a manful soldier two fierce hours. 35 



258 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight 
great towers, cannon, muskets, fire, and smoke. One draw- 
bridge down! "Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques 
One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two 
5 Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand ; in the 
name of all the angels or the dev.'ls — which you prefer — 
work!" Thus Defarge of the wine shop, still at his gun, 
which had long grown hot. 

"To me, women!" cried ma-dame his wife. "What! 

10 We can kill as well as the men, when the place is taken!" 
And to her, with a shrill, thirsty cry, trooping women variously 
armed but all armed alike in hunger and revenge. 

Cannon, muskets, fire, and smoke ; but still the deep ditch, 
the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight 

15 great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made 
by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, 
smoking wagonloads of wet straw, hard work at neighboring 
barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, 
bravery without stint, boom, smash, and rattle, and the furious 

20 sounding of the living sea; but still the deep ditch and the 
single drawbridge and the massive stone walls and the eight 
great towers and still Defarge of the wine shop at his gun, 
grown doubly hot by the service of four fierce hours. 

A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley — this 

25 dimly perceptible through the raging storm — nothing audible 
in it. Suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher 
and swept Defarge of the wine shop over the lowered draw- 
bridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the 
eight great towers, surrendered ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Dickens's life. 2. Describe the Bastille. 3. Ex- 
plain the first paragraph of the selection. What was Saint Antoine ? 4. Why 
were the naked arms like shriveled branches of trees? 5. What quiv- 
ered over the crowd? Explain this simile. 6. Explain "held life as 



CHARLES DICKENS 259 

of no account and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice 
it." 7. Explain the comparison beginning "As a whirlpool." What is 
a caldron? a vortex? 

8. Why does Defarge call his companions Jacques One, Two, etc.? 
(Jacques was a common, derisive name given to the French peasantry. 
Defarge numbers his comrades to distinguish them. For his purpose 
it is enough that they belong to the downtrodden working class.) 9. Why 
was the Bastille detested? 10. Explain "the living sea." 11. Describe 
Defarge; Madame Defarge. 12. The strength of a description depends 
upon how vividly the author makes one see what he describes. How 
does this description impress you? 13. Does it make war pleasing or 
hateful ? 

The storming of the Bastille is also vividly described by Carlyle in 
"The French Revolution." 

MR. PICKWICK AND HIS FRIENDS ON THE ICE 

["Pickwick Papers," from which this selection is taken, tells of the 
travels and adventures of the Pickwick Club. Mr. Pickwick, the lead- 
ing spirit of the club, together with three other distinguished members, 
Messrs. Tupman, Snodgrass, and Winkle, set off on a journey through 
England to examine and investigate very carefully everything that they 
see and to report their discoveries to the club. 

Mr. Pickwick employs a servant, Sam Weller, who travels with the 
party and makes himself generally useful. After many singular ad- 
ventures they become acquainted with a hospitable old gentleman 
named Wardle and are invited to spend Christmas with him at his home, 
Manor Farm. There they meet the Wardle family and several young 
people who have also been invited for the holidays. In the party are 
Benjamin Allen and Bob Sawyer, two medical students.] 

"Now," said Wardle, after a substantial lunch had been 
done ample justice to ; "what say you to an hour on the ice? 
We shall have plenty of time." 

"Capital!" said Mr. Benjamin Allen. 

"Prime!" ejaculated Mr. Bob Sawyer. 5 

"You skate, of course, Winkle?" said Wardle. 

"Ye-yes; oh, yes," replied Mr. Winkle. "I — I — am 
rather out of practice." 



260 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

"Oh, do skate, Mr. Winkle," said Arabella. "I like to see 
it so much." 

"Oh, it is so graceful," said another young lady. 

A third young lady said it was elegant, and a fourth ex- 

5 pressed her opinion that it was "swanlike." 

"I should be very happy, I'm sure," said Mr. Winkle, 
reddening; "but I have no skates." 

This objection was at once overruled. Trundle had a couple 
of pair, and the fat boy announced that there were half a dozen 

iomore down stairs, whereat Mr. Winkle expressed exquisite 
delight and looked exquisitely uncomfortable. 

Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice, 
and the fat boy and Mr. Weller having shoveled and swept 
away the snow which had fallen on it during the night, 

is Mr. Bob Sawyer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which 
to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvelous and described circles 
with his left leg and cut figures of eight and inscribed upon 
the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other 
pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfac- 

20 tion of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies ; which 
reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm when old Wardle 
and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Saw- 
yer, performed some mystic evolutions which they called 
a reel. 

25 All this time Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue 
with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of 
his feet and putting his skates on with the points behind 
and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled 
state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather 

30 less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with 
the assistance of Mr. Weller, the unfortunate skates were 
firmly screwed and buckled on, and Mr. Winkle was raised to 
his feet. 

"Now then, sir," said Sam in an encouraging tone, "off 

35 with you and show 'em how to do it." 



CHARLES DICKENS 261 

"Stop, Sam, stop!" said Mr. Winkle, trembling violently 
and clutching hold of Sam's arms with the grasp of a drowning 
man. "How slippery it is, Sam !" 

"Not an uncommon thing upon ice, sir," replied Mr. 
Weller. "Hold up, sir!" This last observation of Mr. 5 
Weller's bore reference to a demonstration Mr. Winkle made 
at the instant, of a frantic desire to throw his feet in the air 
and dash the back of his head on the ice. 

"These — these — are very awkward skates, ain't they, 
Sam?" inquired Mr. Winkle, staggering. IO 

"I'm afeerd there's a orkard genTm'n in 'em, sir," replied 
Sam. 

"Now, Winkle," cried Mr. Pickwick, quite unconscious 
that there was anything the matter. "Come; the ladies are 
all anxiety." 

"Yes, yes," replied Mr. Winkle, with a ghastly smile. 
"I'm coming." 

"Just a-goin' to begin," said Sam, endeavoring to disengage 
himself. "Now, sir, start off!" 

"Stop an instant, Sam," gasped Mr. Winkle, clinging most 20 
affectionately to Mr. Weller. "I find I've got a couple of 
coats at home that I don't want, Sam. You may have them, 
Sam." 

"Thank'ee, sir," replied Mr. Weller. 

"Never mind touching your hat, Sam," said Mr. Winkle 25 
hastily. "You needn't take your hand away to do that. 
I meant to have given you five shillings this morning 
for a Christmas box, Sam. I'll give it you this afternoon, 
Sam." 

"You're wery good, sir," replied Mr. Weller. 3 o 

"Just hold me at first, Sam; will you?" said Mr. Winkle. 
"There — that's right. I shall soon get in the way of it, 
Sam. Not too fast, Sam ; not too fast." 

Mr. Winkle stooping forward, with his body half doubled 
up, was being assisted over the ice by Mr. Weller in a very 35 



262 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

singular and wwswanlike manner, when Mr. Pickwick most 
innocently shouted from the opposite bank. 

"Sam!" 

"Sir?" 
5 "Here! I want you." 

"Let go, sir," said Sam. "Don't you hear the governor 
a-callin'? Let go, sir." 

With a violent effort Mr. Weller disengaged himself from the 

grasp of the agonized Pickwickian and in so doing administered 

10 a considerable impetus to the unhappy Mr. Winkle. With an 

accuracy which no degree of dexterity or practice could have 

insured, that unfortunate gentleman bore swiftly down into 

the center of the reel at the very moment when Mr. Bob 

Sawyer was performing a flourish of unparalleled beauty. Mr. 

^Winkle struck wildly against him, and with a loud crash they 

both fell heavily down. Mr. Pickwick ran to the spot. Bob 

Sawyer had risen to his feet, but Mr. Winkle was far too wise 

to do anything of the kind, in skates. He was seated on the 

ice, making spasmodic efforts to smile, but anguish was 

20 depicted on every lineament of his countenance. 

"Are you hurt?" inquired Mr. Benjamin Allen with great 
anxiety. 

"Not much," said Mr. Winkle, rubbing his back very 
hard. 
25 "I wish you'd let me bleed you," said Mr. Benjamin with 
great eagerness. 

"No, thank you," replied Mr. Winkle hurriedly. 

"I really think you had better," said Allen. 

"Thank you," replied Mr. Winkle; "I'd rather not." 
30 "What do you think, Mr. Pickwick ? " inquired Bob Sawyer. 

Mr. Pickwick was excited and indignant. He beckoned 
to Mr. Weller and said in a stern voice, "Take his skates off." 

"No, but really I had scarcely begun," remonstrated Mr. 
Winkle. 
35 "Take his skates off," repeated Mr. Pickwick firmly. 



CHARLES DICKENS 263 

The command was not to be resisted. Mr. Winkle allowed 
Sam to obey it in silence. 

/'Lift him up," said Mr. Pickwick. Sam assisted him to 
rise. 

Mr. Pickwick retired a few paces apart from the bystanders 5 
and beckoning his friend to approach fixed a searching look 
upon him and uttered in a low but distinct and emphatic 
tone these remarkable words : 

" You're a humbug, sir." 

"A what?" said Mr. Winkle, starting. 10 

"A humbug, sir. I will speak plainer, if you wish it. An 
impostor, sir." 

With those words Mr. Pickwick turned slowly on his heel 
and rejoined his friends. 

While Mr. Pickwick was delivering himself of the sentiment 15 
just recorded, Mr. Weller and the fat boy, having by their 
joint endeavors cut out a slide, were exercising themselves 
thereupon in a very masterly and brilliant manner. Sam 
Weller, in particular, was displaying that beautiful feat of 
fancy sliding which is currently denominated " knocking at 20 
the cobbler's door," and which is achieved by skimming over 
the ice on one foot and occasionally giving a postman's knock 
upon it with the other. It was a good long slide, and there 
was something in the motion which Mr. Pickwick, who was 
very cold with standing still, could not help envying. 25 

"It looks a nice warm exercise that, doesn't it ? " he inquired 
of War die, when that gentleman was thoroughly out of 
breath by reason of the indefatigable manner in which he had 
converted his legs into a pair of compasses and drawn com- 
plicated problems on the ice. 30 

"Ah, it does indeed," replied Wardle. "Do you slide?" 

"I used to do so, on the gutters, when I was a boy," replied 
Mr. Pickwick. 

"Try it now," said Wardle. 

"Oh, do, please, Mr. Pickwick!" cried all the ladies. 35 



264 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

"I should be very happy to afford you any amusement," 
replied Mr. Pickwick, "but I haven't done such a thing these 
thirty years." 

"Pooh! pooh! Nonsense!" said Wardle, dragging off his 

5 skates with the impetuosity which characterized all his 
proceedings. "Here ; I'll keep you company. Come along ! " 
And away went the good-tempered old fellow down the slide 
with a rapidity which came very close upon Mr. Weller and 
beat the fat boy all to nothing. 

10 Mr. Pickwic^k paused, considered, pulled off his gloves 
and put them in his hat, took two or three short runs, balked 
himself as often, and at last took another run and went 
slowly and gravely down the slide with his feet about a 
yard and a quarter apart, amidst the gratified shouts of all 

15 the spectators. 

"Keep the pot a-bilin', sir!" said Sam; and down went 
Wardle again, and then Mr. Pickwick, and then Sam, and 
then Mr. Winkle, and then Mr. Bob Sawyer, and then the 
fat boy, and then Mr. Snodgrass, following closely upon each 

20 other's heels and running after each other with as much eager- 
ness as if all their future prospects in life depended on their 
expedition. 

It was the most intensely interesting thing to observe the 
manner in which Mr. Pickwick performed his share in the 

25 ceremony, to watch the torture of anxiety with which he 
viewed the person behind gaining upon him at the imminent 
hazard of tripping him up, to see him gradually expend the 
painful force he had put on at first, and turn slowly round on 
the slide with his face towards the point from which he had 

30 started, to contemplate the playful smile which mantled on his 
face when he had accomplished the distance, and the eagerness 
with which he turned round when he had done so, and ran after 
his predecessor, his black gaiters tripping pleasantly through 
the snow and his eyes beaming cheerfulness and gladness 

35 through his spectacles. And when he was knocked down 



CHARLES DICKENS 2 6 5 

(which happened upon the average every third round), it 
was the most invigorating sight that can possibly be imagined 
to behold him gather up his hat, gloves, and handkerchief, 
with a glowing countenance, and resume his station in the 
rank with an ardor and enthusiasm that nothing could 5 
abate. 

The sport was at its height, the sliding was at the quickest 
the laughter was at the loudest, when a sharp, smart crack 
was heard. There was a quick rush towards the bank a 
wild scream from the ladies, and a shout from Mr. Tupman re 
A large mass of ice disappeared, the water bubbled up over 
it, Mr. Pickwick's hat, gloves, and handkerchief were floating 
on the surface, and this was all of Mr. Pickwick that anybody 
could see. 

Dismay and anguish were depicted on every countenance, ic 
the males turned pale, and the females fainted, Mr. Snodgrass ' 
and Mr. Winkle grasped each other by the hand and gazed 
at the spot where their leader had gone down, with frenzied 
eagerness; while Mr. Tupman, by way of rendering the 
promptest assistance and at the same time conveying to any 2C 
persons who might be within hearing, the clearest possible 
notion of the catastrophe, ran off across the country at his 
utmost speed screaming "Fire!" with all his might. 

It was at this moment, when old Wardle and Sam Weller 
were approaching the hole with cautious steps and Mr. Ben- 25 
jamin Allen was holding a hurried consultation with Mr Bob " 
Sawyer on the advisability of bleeding the company generally 
as an improving little bit of professional practice - it was at 
this very moment, that a face, head, and shoulders emerged 
from beneath the water and disclosed the features and 3 c 
spectacles of Mr. Pickwick. 

"Keep yourself up for an instant — for only one instant!" 
bawled Mr. Snodgrass. 

L" Y S d ° ; let me im P lore you — for my sake!" roared 
Mr. Winkle, deeply affected. The adjuration was rather 35 



266 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

unnecessary, the probability being that if Mr. Pickwick had 
declined to keep himself up for anybody else's sake it would 
have occurred to him that he might as well do so for his own. 
"Do you feel the bottom there, old fellow?" said Wardle. 
5 " Yes, certainly," replied Mr. Pickwick, wringing the water 
from his head and face and gasping for breath. ki I fell upon 
my back. I cculdn't get on my feet at first." 

The clay upon so much of Mr. Pickwick's coat as was yet 
visible bore testimony to the accuracy of this statement; 
ioand as the fears of the spectators were still further relieved 
by the fat boy's suddenly recollecting that the water was 
nowhere more than five feet deep, prodigies of valor were 
performed to get him out. After a vast quantity of splashing 
and cracking and struggling, Mr. Pickwick was at length 
i 5 fairly extricated from his unpleasant position and once more 
stood on dry land. 

"Oh, he'll catch his death of cold !" said Emily. 
"Dear old thing!" said Arabella. "Let me wrap this 
shawl round you, Mr. Pickwick." 
20 "Ah, that's the best thing you can do," said Wardle ; "and 
when you've got it on, run home as fast as your legs can carry 
you and jump into bed directly.' 

A dozen shawls were offered on the instant. Three or four 
of the thickest having been selected, Mr. Pickwick was 
25 wrapped up and started off under the guidance of Mr. Weller, 
presenting the singular phenomenon of an elderly gentleman, 
dripping wet and without a*hat, with his arms bound down to 
his sides, skimming over the ground without any clearly defined 
purpose, at the rate of six good English miles an hour. 
30 But Mr. Pickwick cared not for appearances in such an 
extreme case, and urged on by Sam Weller, he kept at the 
very top of his speed until he reached the door of Manor 
Farm. 



CHARLES DICKENS 267 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. What is " Pickwick Papers," and about what does it tell? 
2. Where were the various characters mentioned in this selection 
spending Christmas, and how did they happen to be there? 3. Ex- 
plain "ejaculated," " dexterity," "mystic evolutions," "disengaged 
himself," "agonized," "administered a considerable impetus," "un- 
paralleled beauty," "spasmodic efforts." 4. Put into simpler words 
"Anguish was depicted on every lineament of his countenance." Does 
Dickens's use of long words add to or take from the fun of a description? 

5. Why were the young men so anxious to bleed Mr. Winkle? 6. In 
this scene what sort of person does Mr. Winkle show himself to be? 
What does Mr. Pickwick's remark to him show you of Mr. Pickwick's 
character? What else do you learn of Mr. Pickwick from the scene 
which follows? 7. Explain "indefatigable," "impetuosity," "char- 
acterized," "balked himself," "mantled on his face," "adjuration," 
"prodigies of valor," "extricated," "phenomenon." 

"A Christmas Carol" and "David Copperfield" are probably the 
best books with which to begin the reading of Dickens. 



ROBERT BROWNING 

1812-1889 

The reign of Queen Victoria, in England, was made famous 
by two great poets. One of them, about whom you have 
already read, was Tennyson ; the other was Robert Browning. 

Browning was born in 181 2, three years after Tennyson, in 
a suburb of London called Camberwell, which has since 
become a part of the city. Then there were pleasant fields 
about it, and country lanes, and near by a wood among 
whose shadows the boy used often to play. But young Robert 
Browning's favorite haunt was a group of elms on a bit of high 
ground near his home, where he could look out over the roofs 
and spires and chimneys of the great city just beyond. Espe- 
cially he loved, as night was coming on, to watch the city's 
twinkling lights and wonder about the houses from which they 
shone out and about the people who had lighted them. All 
through his life he cared more for people than for nature ; he 
liked society, was friendly with all, and while other poets found 
their poetry in trees and flowers and running brooks, he found 
his in the hearts of men. 

Robert's father was a bank clerk, and we have reason to 
believe, a good one. By faithful work and saving he had 
become fairly well-to-do, and he spent his leisure in reading 
and study, in collecting rare books — of which he had a 
fine library, — and in trying to write poetry, in which he was 
not altogether successful. He greatly loved his boy, and it is 
said that often at night he used to pace back and forth in his 
library with the child in his arms, singing him to sleep with a 
fragment of an old Greek song which he loved. One of the 

268 



ROBERT BROWNING 269 

boy's earliest recollections was of his father telling him the 
story of the fall of Troy and pointing out the burning palaces 
and temples in the glowing coals of the big fireplace, while his 
mother was singing in the dusk of the evening, from the next 
room, a wild, weird song which seemed like a fitting accompani- 
ment to the story. 

His mother was a noble woman, and throughout her life 
Browning was entirely devoted to her. He also had a sister 
two years younger than himself, of whom he was very fond. 
All the family loved music and pictures and poetry, and it 
seems as if Robert could not help being a poet. When he was 
only twelve he tried to find a publisher for a volume of verse 
which he had written. The verse was probably not very 
good ; at least he found no one willing to publish it. 

When about thirteen he saw at one of the second-hand 
bookstores, in which his father had already taught him to 
browse, a little book of poetry by Shelley. The name of the 
poet was unfamiliar to him, and in fact to most Englishmen of 
that day, for Shelley's poetry had not then begun to be appre- 
ciated ; but the verses thrilled him, he wanted to know more 
of this wonderful new poet, and after some questioning he 
learned that Shelley had written a few books of poems and 
had been dead some years. That was all anybody seemed 
then to know about Shelley. Robert's mother helped him to 
get this information and succeeded in finding a volume or two 
of poems by Shelley and also some by Keats. 

Browning has told how he took the books out into the garden 
to read them. It was an afternoon in May, and as evening 
came on, two nightingales began to sing in the trees above him. 
A new world of poetry had opened to the boy. Shelley and 
Keats were now his heroes, and he 'imagined that the two 
nightingales were their spirits singing to him. This thought of 
the nightingales he carried with him many years. 

Young Robert Browning was fond of pets and especially 
of strange pets such as no other boy would have. He kept a 



270 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

tame eagle, a hedgehog, a monkey, a magpie, an owl, and 
several snakes — a whole menagerie of pets, in fact ; and it is 
said that one winter's day, when he had found two ladybugs 
nearly frozen in the snow, he brought them home, put them 
into a box lined with cotton, and labeled them " Animals found 
surviving in the depths of a severe winter." He was a boy 
with an investigating turn of mind and often disturbed his 
parents by his fondness for pulling things to pieces to see how 
they were made. 

He went to school, off and on, until he was fourteen. Then 
for four years he studied under a private tutor and for two 
years at the University of London. At twenty he left the 
university and went to Italy. He had spent much time in 
studying music and art, and thought seriously of becoming 
a painter or a musician, but he now decided to devote him- 
self entirely to the writing of poetry. His first poem was 
not a success, nor his second, nor his third. He wrote a 
play in verse, which was played in London a few nights by 
the actor Macready, but that too was unsuccessful. People 
could not understand him. Yet he kept at work, feeling sure 
that they would listen in the end. And they did. 

He now began to have his poems printed in little pamphlets, 
which sold at sixpence (equal to twelve cents of our money) or 
a shilling (equal to twenty-four cents). The first of these 
pamphlets contained the poem "Pippa Passes," which at once 
attracted attention. The third contained "The Pied Piper 
of Hamelin," which Browning had written to amuse the little 
son of Macready, when the boy lay ill in bed. In the same 
pamphlet were also the " Incident of the French Camp," 
"My Last Duchess," and "Boot and Saddle." Pamphlets 
which followed contained "How They Brought the Good 
News from Ghent to Aix," "The Boy and the Angel," 
"Saul," and other poems that have since become famous. 

Among the first to read and appreciate Browning's poetry 
was Elizabeth Barrett, herself a well-known poet of that 



272 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

day. She was a young woman of a beautiful spirit, but 
was an invalid, scarcely able to leave her room, and it was 
thought she had not long to live. Browning married Miss 
Barrett and took her to Italy. There she grew well again, 
and a few years later they had a little son who was a great 
joy to both his parents and who afterwards became a suc- 
cessful painter. 

For fifteen years the Brownings lived in Italy, with occa- 
sional short journeys to England and to France. Their home 
was an old palace in Florence, known as Casa Guidi. They 
lived mainly out of doors, wrote poetry, read, and studied. 
But in 1861 Mrs. Browning died, and Browning, with his 
boy, went back to London. There he lived for nearly thirty 
years, honored and made much of, but remaining, through it 
all, simple, unspoiled, a true and earnest man. There he 
wrote his most important poem, "The Ring and the Book," 
and there he enjoyed the friendship of the greatest authors, 
poets, and statesmen of the world. In 1889 he went again to 
Italy, and died there at the age of seventy-seven, while 
visiting his son in Venice. 

We think of Browning always as a strong man, full of life, 
full of energy, thinking high thoughts, and loving all men as 
his brothers. 

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM 
GHENT TO AFX 

[Browning tells us that this poem was written on shipboard after he 
"had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop." 
The ride was entirely imaginary, but from the fact that the poet dated 
it 16 — it is likely that he was thinking of a possible incident in the wars 
of the Netherlands, when riders might have brought to Aix la Chapelle 
tidings of a decisive victory or of the coming of reinforcements. Three 
riders are supposed to be starting out together from Ghent. They are 
the one who is telling the story, and his two friends Joris and Dirck. 
The "he" in the first line refers to Dirck. The speaker's horse is named 






ROBERT BROWNING 273 

Roland ; Joris's horse is named Roos. Note how the movement of the 
verse gives the effect of the galloping of the horses.] 

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he ; 

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 

"Good speed !" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew; 

" Speed !" echoed the wall to us galloping through; 

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 5 

And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace 

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place ; 

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 

Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, 10 

Rebuckled the cheek strap, chained slacker the bit, 

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 

'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near 

Lokeren, the cocks crew, and twilight dawned clear ; 

At Boom a great yellow star came out to see ; 15 

At Dtiffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be ; 

And from Mecheln church steeple we heard the half-chime, 

So Joris broke silence with "Yet there is time !" 

At Aershot up Leaped of a sudden the sun, 

And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 

To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, 

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 

With resolute shoulders, each butting away 

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray : 



25 



And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back 

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ; 

And one eye's black intelligence — ever that glance 

O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance ! 

And the thick heavy spume flakes which aye and anon 

His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 3 o 



274 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, "Stay spur ! 
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
We'll remember at Aix" — for one heard the quick wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, 
5 And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 

So we were left galloping, Joris and I, 
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; 
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
to 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff ; 
Till over by Dalhem a dome spire sprang white, 
And " Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" 

"How they'll greet us !" — and all in a moment his roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
i 5 And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 

Then I cast loose my buff coat, each holster let fall, 
20 Shook off both my jack boots, let go belt and all, 
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 
Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer ; 
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, 
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 

25 And all I remember is — friends flocking round 

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground ; 
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, 
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 

30 Was no more than his due who brought good news from 
Ghent. 



ROBERT BROWNING 275 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a brief account of Browning's life. 2. Tell what you can 
about the time and the object of this ride. 3. Explain line 4, page 273, 
beginning "Speed!" 4. Why were three riders sent instead of one? 
5. What is the "pique"? the "cheek strap"? What is meant by 
"chained slacker the bit"? 6. What was Roland doing while all these 
changes were being made in the harness? 

7. Note the pictures flashed upon us as the riders pass through the 
various towns : the gradual coming of the day, the steeple with the bell 
ringing the half hour, the cattle against the rising sun, the horse pushing 
through the morning mist, with the flakes of foam flying from his mouth. 
Explain the simile in line 24, page 273. What showed the intelligence 
of the horse? What showed his speed? 8. What happened at Has- 
selt? (Hasselt is about eighty miles from Ghent. Aix la Chapelle is 
about ninety miles — the entire length of the ride.) 9. What does line 9, 
page 274, tell of the weather? Note the crisp effect of line 10. 

10. Explain "rolled neck and croup over." 11. Define "buff coat," 
"holster," "jack boots." Why did the rider make so much noise? 
12. Why was the last measure of wine poured down Roland's throat, 
and what does that show of the condition of Aix and of the feeling of the 
inhabitants? Who were "the burgesses"? 13. Name one or more 
other famous rides about which poems have been written. 

Browning was fond of representing the movement of horses in his 
verse. "Boot and Saddle" is another galloping poem. "Through the 
Metidja" represents a rocking saddle-gait. 

HERVE RIEL 

[The event described in this poem happened during the war which 
followed the accession of William of Orange, or William III, to the 
English throne. France, under Louis XIV, feared the new king and 
attempted to restore to power James II, who had been driven out of 
England by William. At first the French were successful on the sea, 
defeating the combined English and Dutch navies, but in 1692, after a 
three days' battle, a large French fleet was conquered and scattered 
by the English. This battle occurred near La Hogue, or La Houge, 
off the coast of France and not far from the mouth of the Seine. A 
part of the defeated squadron commanded by Damfreville fled past 
Cherbourg, rounded Cape de la Hague, and dodged among the Channel 



276 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Islands to St. Malo, closely pursued by the English. The native pilots 
of St. Malo declared that it was impossible to guide these warships 
through the narrow channel into the mouth of the river Ranee, where 
they might find a harbor and protection. But Herve Riel, a sailor on 
one of the French ships, offered to take them through. He had been a 
pilot along that coast and knew the channel well. The force of the 
story lies in the quiet self-confidence of a man who knew his business 
and in this man's joy to be of service, entirely thoughtless of reward. 
He saved the fleet, and all he asked was a holiday. 

Browning first published the poem in The Cornhill Magazine, in 187 1, 
and received for it £100, which he sent to the sufferers in Paris who were 
besieged by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War.] 

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety- two, 

Did the English fight the French — woe to France ! 
And the thirty-first of May helter skelter thro' the blue, 
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, 
5 Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Ranee, 
With the English fleet in view. 

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full 
chase ; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 
Damfreville ; 
Close on him fled, great and small, 
IO Twenty-two good ships in all ; 
And they signaled to the place 
"Help the winners of a race ! 

Get us guidance, give us harbor, take ' us quick — or, 

quicker still, 
Here's the English can and will !" 

! 5 Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on 
board ; 
"Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass? " 
laughed they : 



ROBERT BROWNING 277 

" Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred 

and scored, 
Shall the Formidable here, with her twelve and eighty guns, 
Think to make the river mouth by the single narrow way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, 
And with flow at full beside ? 5 

Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
Reach the mooring ? Rather say, 
While rock stands or water runs, 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 

Then was called a council straight. 10 

Brief and bitter the debate : 

"Here's the English at our heels ; would you have them take 

in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, 
For a prize to Plymouth Sound ? 
Better run the ships aground !" 15 

(Ended Damfreville his speech.) 
"Not a minute more to wait ! 

Let the Captains all and each 

Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the 
beach ! 
France must undergo her fate. 20 

"Give the word !" But no such word 
Was ever spoke or heard ; 

For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all 
these 
— A captain ? A lieutenant ? A mate — first, second, third ? 
No such man of mark, and meet 25 

With his betters to compete ! 

But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the 
fleet, 
A poor coasting pilot he, Herve Riel the Croisickese. 



278 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENCxLISH 

And "What mockery or malice have we here?*' cries Herve 
Riel: 
"Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or 
rogues ? 
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, 

tell 
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 
5 'Twixt the offing here and Greve, where the river dis- 
embogues ? 
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? 
Morn and eve, night and day, 
Have I piloted your bay, 
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. 
10 Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than 
fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, believe me 
there's a way ! 
Only let me lead the line, 

Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this Formidable clear, 
15 Make the others follow mine, 
And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, 
Right to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound ; 
And if one ship misbehave, 
20 — Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my head!" cries 
Herve Riel. 

Not a minute more to wait. 
"Steer us in, then, small and great ! 
Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron !" cried its 
chief. 
25 Captains, give the sailor place ! 
He is admiral, in brief. 



ROBERT BROWNING 279 

Still the north wind, by God's grace ! 
See the noble fellow's face 
As the big ship, with a bound, 
Clears the entry like a hound, 

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's 
profound ! 5 

See, safe thro' shoal and rock, 

How they follow in a flock, 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, 

Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past, 10 

All are harbored, to the last, 

And just as Herve Riel hollas " Anchor!" — sure as fate 
Up the English come, too late ! 

So, the storm subsides to calm ; 

They see the green trees wave 15 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 
Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 
" Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay, 
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 20 

As they cannonade away ! 
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Ranee !" 
How hope succeeds despair on each captain's countenance ! 
Out burst all with one accord, 

"This is Paradise for Hell ! 25 

Let France, let France's king 

Thank the man that did the thing !" 
What a shout, and all one word, 

" Herve Riel!" 
As he stepped in front once more, 3 o 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
Just the same man as before. 



2 8o NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Then said Damfreville : "My friend, 
I must speak out at the end, 

Tho' I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 
5 You have saved the king his ships, 
You must name your own reward. 
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse ! 
Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 
ioAsk to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfre- 
ville." 

Then a beam of fun outbroke 
On the bearded mouth that spoke, 
As the honest heart laughed through 
Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 
15 "Since I needs must say my say, 
Since on board the duty's done, 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a 
run? — 
Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 
Since the others go ashore — 
20 Come ! A good whole holiday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle 

Aurore ! " 
That he asked and that he got — nothing more. 

Name and deed alike are lost : 
Not a pillar nor a post 
25 In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 
On a single fishing smack, 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack 
All that France saved from the fight whence England bore 
the bell. 



ROBERT BROWNING 281 

Go to Paris : rank on rank 
Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Louvre, face and flank ! 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. 
So, for better and for worse, 5 

Herve Riel, accept my verse ! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the Belle 
Aurore ! 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1 . When and where was the battle of La Hogue fought ? What 
was the cause of the war, and between what nations was it fought? 

2. Locate on a map La Hogue, St. Malo, Croisic Point, Plymouth Bay. 

3. Draw a map of St. Malo and the mouth of the Ranee, from the de- 
scription given in the poem, locating on it, as nearly as possible, the 
island on which St. Malo is situated (at the mouth of the river), the 
channel, the protected harbor in the river's mouth (behind the island), 
Solidor (a fortress on the river), Greve (the sands where the river 
widens into the harbor) , the line of ships entering. 

4. Write or tell in the briefest and simplest prose the story of Herve 
Riel. 5. Describe the picture in the first stanza. What figure of 
speech is used? 6. Why did the pilots refuse to guide the fleet? 
What do you think of their excuse? 7. What is the significance of 
the line "Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide"? 8. Put into a simple con- 
nected sentence lines 7-9, page 277. ("Bay" means the water outside 
of the harbor.) 9. Describe the council. Who were present? What 
is meant by "linked together stern and bow"? What was Damfre- 
ville's order, and what was the reason for it? 10. Explain "Breton," 
"pressed by Tour ville," " Croisickese," "Malouins," "disembogues." 

n. What did Herve Riel's speech at the council show of his char- 
acter? How did he regard the pilots? What three possible reasons 
did he suggest for their conduct? What forfeit did he offer in case of 
failure, and why was he so anxious to have the chance to pilot the fleet? 
Analyze his speech and tell what different feelings it suggests. 12. What 
does line 1, page 279 — a side remark of the poet's — mean? 13. What 
figures of speech are on page 279? 



282 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

14. Explain " Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's 
profound," "our rapture to enhance," "rake the bay," "rampired 
Solidor." 15. What two pictures do you see on pages 279, 280? Who 
is speaking in lines 18-22, page 279? 16. Explain "Praise is deeper than 
the lips," "our sun was near eclipse" (what figure?), "Malo Roads." 

17. What does Herve Riel's choice of a reward show of his character? 

18. Note the line "Since on board the duty's done." What does that 
show? 

19. Explain "Belle Aurore." What does this nickname tell you of 
Herve Riel? 20. Explain "whence England bore the bell" (a bell 
was often given as a prize for winning a race), " Go to Paris . . . Search 
the heroes." (The Louvre is a great art gallery in Paris; "On the 
Louvre, face and flank" refers to the colossal statues of great French- 
men that decorate its outer walls.) 21. Is this poem more or less 
important as a memorial than a statue would have been ? Give reasons 
for your answer. 

MY STAR 

All that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar) 
Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 

They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
Then it stops like a bird : like a flower, hangs furled : 

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 

Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I love it. 



JOHN RUSKIN 

i 8 19-1900 

Think for a moment of a dreary row of houses in the smokiest 
part of London — square, brick, substantial, and very ugly 
houses — and put into one of them a child who loves beauty 
with a love that is almost a passion ; you will then have the 
John Ruskin of nearly a century ago. He was born in that 
smoky row near Brunswick Square, in 1819, and was the son 
of an honest Scotch merchant who had come from Edin- 
burgh and had by hard labor built up a prosperous business. 
The boy was an only son, and his parents were not only 
entirely devoted to him, but determined that he should receive 
every advantage which they could give him. It was prob- 
ably for his sake that they moved a few years later into the 
suburbs and took a house at Heme Hill. There was a wonder- 
ful garden at Heme Hill, with lilacs and other blooming 
shrubs, apple, pear, and mulberry trees, and all that could 
appeal to a boy who, had been hungry for beautiful things. 

But both father and mother, though very fond of their 
son, were also very strict with him. He was allowed neither 
toys nor sweetmeats. It is said that a kind-hearted aunt, 
who was visiting the family, once gave him a remarkable 
" Punch and Judy," which would dance when attached to 
the leg of a chair. This greatly delighted his childish heart, 
but as soon as the aunt departed he was told that such things 
were not good for him, and he never saw the treasure again. 
He could look at the sea from the upper windows of his home, 
but was not allowed to go near it for fear he would be drowned. 
Even the garden had its drawbacks. He writes: "The 

283 



284 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

differences . . . which I observed between the nature of this 
garden and that of Eden, as I had imagined it, were that in 
this one all the fruit was forbidden, and there were no com- 
panionable beasts." 

If you compare Ruskin's childhood with that of Dickens, 
you will not fail to notice that while Dickens had too little 
care, Ruskin had altogether too much. Yet neither was 
seriously injured by his surroundings — which goes to show 
that one who is determined to do worthy things and to make 
the most of oneself can generally do it, whether his family 
is rich or poor, over-careful or under-careful of him. 

The greatest delight of young John Ruskin's life was a 
two months' jaunt which the family took each summer. 
They went in a family carriage or " traveling chariot," as 
it was called, driving in leisurely fashion from town to town. 
The elder Ruskin made it partly a business trip, but to the 
boy it was pure joy. One of these summer outings took 
him to Switzerland and the Alps and opened a new world of 
beauty to him. 

Young Ruskin's favorite books were Scott and Homer 
— his Homer coming to him in the form of Pope's trans- 
lation. Nor should we overlook his reading of the Bible, 
which, he has said, had the greatest influence upon his literary 
style when he came to write. He read two or three chapters 
with his mother every morning and then learned a chapter 
or a psalm by heart. 

He began to write poetry when very young, copying it 
neatly into little books which he made and illustrated with 
original pictures. These books were made with the utmost 
care. Ruskin even in childhood did everything as well and 
carefully as he knew how to do it. 

He was prepared for college by private tutors, spent a 
few terms at an academy, and at seventeen entered Oxford. 
In the midst of his college work he was threatened with 
consumption and was obliged to leave, but after nearly 



286 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

two years of rest and travel in Italy he was restored to health, 
went back to Oxford, and graduated with honor. 

During his Italian visit he made a study of the great painters 
of olden times, whose work he found in the Italian galleries 
and churches. This led him to write his first book, "Modern 
Painters," which compared the work of Turner and other 
modern artists with that of the old masters and showed that 
the moderns were in some ways the better. Ruskin wrote 
a number of other books on art, including "Seven Lamps of 
Architecture" and "Stones of Venice." During these years 
he made frequent journeys to Italy and spent much time in 
the great galleries. In 1869 he became professor of art at 
Oxford University. 

At about forty he turned his attention to other subjects. 
He saw that the working people of England were deprived 
of things that seemed to him necessary to life — for he knew 
that beauty and truth and justice should belong to the poor 
as well as to the rich. So he wrote four essays showing how 
working people might become noble and happy, and pub- 
lished these essays in the Cornhill Magazine, of which Thack- 
eray was then editor. They were afterwards published in 
a book entitled "Unto This Last." Among other books 
which Ruskin wrote were "Sesame and Lilies," the "Crown 
of Wild Olive," and "Ethics of the Dust." One of his last 
books is "Praeterita" (that is, "things passed by"), which 
tells the story of his own childhood. 

Ruskin received from his father a large fortune, all of 
which he spent in making other people happier and better. 
He built model homes for working people, paid for cleaning 
certain of the streets of London that were not properly 
cared for, and founded a society of working men called St. 
George's Guild, giving it land and a museum. He was him- 
self a painter and left many pictures that show his skill, 
but especially was he a painter in words, and his descriptions 
of natural scenes are among the finest in English prose. He 



JOHN RUSKIN 287 

loved beauty as few love it ; he loved nature, — the rivers 
and the clouds and the forests and the sea, and especially the 
great mountains with their snow-capped tops stretching up 
into the sky, — but nothing was beautiful to him that was 
not good and true and straightforward and pure. He was a 
great man, but above all he was a good man, and he taught 
those around him and those who came after him to see God 
in nature everywhere. 

BOOKS 

[The following extracts are from "Sesame and Lilies," two lectures 
on books and reading given in Manchester, England, in 1864. " Sesame," 
the first lecture, is so called from an oriental grain, the name of which, 
when spoken, opened the robbers' cave in "The Arabian Nights"; 
Ruskin means by it that reading is the key which will open the treasuries 
of knowledge and power found in books.] 

Granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose 
our friends well, how few of us have the power ! We may, 
by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet and hear 
the sound of his voice, or put a question to a man of science 
and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten 5 
minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch once 
or twice in our lives the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
the path of a princess or arresting the kind glance of a queen. 
And yet these momentary chances we covet, and spend ourio 
years and passions and powers in pursuit of little more than 
these; while, meantime, there is a society continually open 
to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, what- 
ever our rank or occupation — talk to us in the best words 
they can choose and of the things nearest their hearts. And 15 
this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle and can 
be kept waiting round us all day long — kings and statesmen 
lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it ! — in 
those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our book-case 



288 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

shelves, — we make no account of that company — perhaps 
never listen to a word they would say, all day long ! . . . 

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
by their greatest men — by great readers, great statesmen, 

5 and great thinkers. These are all at your choice, and life 
is short. You have heard as much before — yet have you 
measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities ? 
Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that — 
that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow ? Will 

ioyou go and gossip with your housemaid or your stableboy, 
when you may talk with queens and kings, or flatter your- 
selves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own 
claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common 
crowd for entree here and audience there, when all the while 

15 this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the 
world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty 
of every place and time ? Into that you may enter always ; 
in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your 
wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be 

20 outcast but by your own fault. . . . 

This court of the past differs from all living aristocracy 
in this : it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. 
Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself 
noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation 

25 of the wise ? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. 
But on other terms? — no. If you will not rise to us, we 
cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, 
the living philosopher explain his thought to you with con- 
siderate pains ; but here we neither feign nor interpret ; you 

30 must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be glad- 
dened by them, and share our feelings if you would recognize 
our presence. 

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it 
is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 

35 are to be among them. . . . 



JOHN RUSKIN 289 

No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor 
is it serviceable, until it has been read, and reread, and loved, 
and loved again, and marked, so that you can refer to the 
passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he 
needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs 5 
from her store. Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, 
sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the 
family must be poor indeed which once in their lives cannot 
for such multipliable barley loaves, pay their baker's bill. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Why do we not have the power always to choose our friends? 
2. What is a cabinet minister? Why does Ruskin refer to a cabinet 
minister's words as being deceptive? 3. What figure of speech in 
"there is a society continually open to us"? Explain it. Explain 
" narrow anterooms." 4. Ruskin says "life is short." In comparison 
with what is it short? 5. Explain "Will you go and gossip with your 
housemaid or your stableboy, when you may talk with queens and 
kings? " Define "entree" as used here. 

6. What is the "eternal court" that is always open to you? Do you 
think this figure would seem more forceful to an English audience than 
to one in the United States? Why? 7. Explain the four sentences 
beginning "Do you ask to be the companion?" Memorize them. In 
what sense is "nobles" here used? 8. Explain "here we neither feign 
nor interpret." 9. Name and explain the figures of speech in the last 
paragraph. What allusion is there in "multipliable barley loaves"? 

10. What advantage is there in knowing a book thoroughly? What 
kind of books should be thus known? In another part of this lecture 
Ruskin describes two classes of books, "the books of the hour, and the 
books of all time." Give examples of each kind among the books that 
you have read, and tell why they are so. 11. Bacon said, "Some books 
are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 
digested." Explain this. 12. Make a list of the great books which 
you have read and tell why you think them great. 



MARIAN EVANS (" GEORGE ELIOT") 

1819-1880 

About a century ago there lived in Warwickshire, some 
twenty miles from Shakespeare's old town of Stratford, a 
hard-headed and industrious Welshman named Robert Evans. 
He occupied a place known as " South Farm," on the large 
estate of Arbury, and was employed by the owner of the estate 
as his agent and overseer. In the autumn of 18 19 the house- 
hold at South Farm included Evans, his wife — a shrewd and 
practical woman, — and two children, Isaac and Christiana. 
But in November of that year another child was born into 
the home — a child quite different from any of the other 
members of the family, and with a genius which made her in 
later years the greatest of women novelists. She was named 
by her parents, very plainly, Mary Ann, but when she grew 
up she abbreviated the name to Marian. 

Six months after Mary Ann's birth the Evans family 
moved into a larger place about a mile away, called Griff 
House, and there they lived for twenty years. In "The 
Mill on the Floss" this house is described, and the children, 
Tom and Maggie Tulliver, are thought to be portraits of 
Isaac and Mary Ann Evans. Mary Ann was an active child — 
somewhat of a tomboy in fact — and was always getting into 
trouble. But with all her seeming thoughtlessness she had 
a most affectionate nature and longed for love and sympathy, 
and the sad feature of it was that none of her family really 
understood her. 

She was sent to a private school at Nuneaton and a little 
later to Coventry, both of which towns were within three 

290 



2Q2 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

miles of her home. When she went to Coventry she was 
thirteen and had become somewhat sobered. She was th? 
brightest pupil in the school and distinguished herself in 
English, French, German, drawing, and music. The descrip- 
tion of Maggie in "The Mill on the Floss" is here clearly a 
picture of herself — "a creature full of eager, passionate 
longings for all that was beautiful and glad ; thirsty for all 
knowledge, with an ear straining after dreamy music that 
died away and would not come near to her." 

When she was sixteen her mother died, and she had to 
leave school, go back to Griff House, and help her sister 
Christiana take care of the home. Then Christiana married 
and went away, and Isaac (or "Tom") became so absorbed 
in getting on in the world that he quite forgot his younger 
sister. Griff House was far away from the world of men and 
women, and Marian Evans grew very lonely. 

A few years later, when Isaac married, his father gave 
him the house and went with Marian to a place called Foles- 
hill, in the suburbs of Coventry, where the young woman, 
now twenty-one years old, found friends who appreciated 
her and where she was able to carry on her studies. For 
nine years she and her father lived together at Foleshill, 
and they became deeply attached to each other. Then 
Mr. Evans died, and Marian was left practically alone. 
The loss almost crushed her. It was months before she re- 
covered from it. Upon the advice of friends she spent a year 
in European travel, and when she returned she devoted her 
life to writing. Emerson came to see her during a visit to 
England and was greatly impressed with her power. 

In 185 1, at the age of thirty-two, she took a position as 
assistant editor of the Westminster Review and went to London, 
where she soon became acquainted with Tennyson, Brown- 
ing, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Kingsley, and other leading 
writers of the time. She also met George Henry Lewes, a 
writer of less note but of rare personal qualities, who devoted 



MARIAN EVANS ("GEORGE ELIOT") 293 

himself to her service, advised her, and assisted her in secur- 
ing publishers for her work. Until this time her writing had 
been chiefly essays and reviews, but Lewes believed that 
she had a special gift for the writing of fiction. One day he 
suggested this idea to her, and she determined to try. The 
result was " Scenes of Clerical Life," a group of three short 
stories, which were published in Blackwood' 's Magazine and 
afterwards in book form, over the signature of "George 
Eliot." The author did not have confidence enough in her 
story-writing ability to use her own name, but the work 
was received with great enthusiasm. No one can guess 
how long she might have kept her readers and even her pub- 
lishers in the dark as to who George Eliot really was, if a 
gentleman of Nuneaton had not foolishly claimed to be the 
author of her book. This decided her to make herself known. 
Accordingly Lewes invited her publisher, Blackwood, to 
dinner "to meet George Eliot." Lewes and Marian Evans 
were the only ones at the table when Blackwood arrived, 
but they had a pleasant dinner, and at its close Blackwood 
expressed himself as being sorry that Mr. Eliot could not 
have been present. "This is Mr. Eliot," said Lewes, waving 
his hand toward the lady. You may imagine Blackwood's 
surprise. 

"Scenes of Clerical Life" was followed by "Adam Bede," 
"The Mill on the Floss," "Romola," and several other 
stories. They were exceedingly popular and made their 
author one of the most prominent literary figures of the day. 
In summer she had a home in Surrey near the Tennysons' ; 
in winter she lived in London, where her receptions were the 
center of the city's literary life. 

Lewes died in 1878, and after his death Marian was 
never quite the same. Several years later she married John 
Walter Cross, an American banker living in England, who 
had been an old friend of the family and was a gentleman 
of fine literary taste. But she did no more important writing. 



2Q4 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

THE FLOOD 

[This vivid description is from the last chapter of "The Mill on the 
Floss." Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom, the children of the miller 
of Dorlcote, had grown up together in the old house by the mill. Maggie 
from her earliest childhood had loved Tom devotedly and was always 
ready to make sacrifices for him. Tom was selfish and loved Maggie 
so long as she did not interfere with his own plans. When Mr. Tulliver, 
the father, died, the mill was sold for debt, but Tom worked hard, was 
successful in business, and after a time bought it back and returned to it 
with his mother and Maggie. 

As Maggie grew up, Tom felt less and less sympathy with her. She 
was high-spirited and imaginative ; he was coarse-grained and common- 
place. At length there was a break between them. Maggie had started 
to go away and marry a man whom she greatly loved, but there were 
reasons which made her feel that such a course would not be right. So 
she returned to Tom and her mother. Tom was angry and would not 
take her into the house. Driven from home, she found a lodging with 
the family of Bob Jakin, an old friend who lived by the riverside. Her 
mother went with her to the Jakins', but afterwards returned to Tom 
at the mill. Maggie, left alone, was sitting late one stormy night in 
her little bedroom, thinking of her troubles and trying to determine what 
to do, when the river rose and became a flood.] 

In the second week of September Maggie was again sit- 
ting in her lonely room. It was past midnight, and the 
rain was beating heavily against the window, driven with 
fitful force by the rushing, loud-moaning wind. There 

5 had been a sudden change in the weather; the heat and 
drought had given way to cold variable winds and heavy 
falls of rain at intervals. In the counties higher up the 
Floss the rains had been continuous, and the completion 
of the harvest had been arrested. And now, for the last 

iotwo days, the rains on this lower course of the river had 
been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads 
and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of weather, 
happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods, 



MARIAN EVANS (" GEORGE ELIOT") 295 

which swept the bridge away and reduced the town to great 
misery. But the younger generation, who had seen several 
small floods, thought lightly of these somber recollections and 
forebodings ; and Bob Jakin, naturally prone to take a hope- 
ful view of his own luck, laughed at his mother when she 5 
regretted their having taken a house by the riverside, observ- 
ing that but for that they would have had no boats, which 
were the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that 
obliged them to go to a distance for food. . 

All were in their beds now, except some solitary watchers IO 
such as Maggie. She sat quite still, far on into the night, 
with no impulse to change her attitude. "How shall I have 
patience and strength?" With that cry of self-despair she 
fell on her knees against the table and buried her sorrow- 
stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that IS 
would be with her to the end. 

At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden 
cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under 
her. She started up ; the stream was flowing under the door 
that led into -the passage. She was not bewildered for an 2Q 
instant ; she knew it was the flood ! 

The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the 
last twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; 
without screaming, she hurried with the candle upstairs 
to Bob Jakin's bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in 2 - 
and shook him by the shoulder. 

"Bob, the flood is come! It is in the house! Let us see 
if we can make the boats safe." 

She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up 
her baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down 30 
again to see if the waters were rising fast. There was a 
step down into the room at the door leading from the stair- 
case ; she saw that the water was already on a level with the 
step. While she was looking, something came with a tre- 
mendous crash against the window and sent the leaded panes 35 



2 9 6 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

and the old wooden framework inward in shivers, the water 
pouring in after it. 

"It is the boat! 1 ' cried Maggie. "Bob, come down to 
get the boats !" 
5 And without a moment's shudder of fear she plunged 
through the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and 
by the glimmering light of the candle she had left on the 
stairs, she mounted on to the window sill and crept into the 
boat, which was left with one prow lodging and protruding 

10 through the window. Bob was not long after her, hurrying 
without shoes or stockings, but with the lantern in his 
hand. 

"Why, they're both here — both the boats," said Bob, 
as he got into the one where Maggie was. "It's wonderful 

15 this fastening isn't broke too, as well as the mooring." 

In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfas- 
tening it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with 
the danger Maggie incurred. We are not apt to fear for 
the fearless when we are companions in their danger, and 

20 Bob's mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the 
safety of the helpless indoors. The fact that Maggie had 
been up, had waked him, and had taken the lead in activity, 
gave Bob a vague impression of her as one who would help 
to protect, not need to be protected. She too had got pos- 

25 session of an oar and had pushed off, so as to release the boat 
from the overhanging window frame. 

u The water's rising so fast," said Bob, "I doubt it'll be in 
at the chambers before long — th' house is so low. I've more 
mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother into the 

30 boat, if I could, and trusten to the water — for th' old house 
is none so safe. And if I let go the boat — but you" he ex- 
claimed, suddenly lifting the light of his lantern on Maggie, 
as she stood in the rain with the oar in her hand and her 
black hair streaming. Maggie had no time to answer, for 

35 a new tidal current swept along the line of the houses and 



MARIAN EVANS (" GEORGE ELIOT") 297 

drove both the boats out on to the wide water, with a force 
that carried them far past the meeting current of the 
river. 

In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of 
nothing, but that she had suddenly passed away from that 5 
life which she had been dreading and was alone in the dark- 
ness with God. 

The whole thing had been so rapid, so dreamlike, that 
the threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank 
down on the seat, clutching the oar mechanically, and for 10 
a long while had no distinct conception of her position. The 
first thing that waked her to fuller consciousness was the 
cessation of the rain and a perception that the darkness was 
divided by the faintest light, which parted the overhanging 
gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She was 15 
driven out upon the flood — that awful visitation of God 
which her father used to talk of, which had made the night- 
mare of her childish dreams. And with that thought there 
rushed in the vision of the old home, and Tom, and her mother 
— - they had all listened together. 20 

"O God, where am I? Which is the way home?" she 
cried out, in the dim loneliness. 

What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood 
had once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in 
distress — her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond 25 
reach of help ! Her whole soul was strained now on that 
thought, and she saw the long-loved faces looking for help 
into the darkness and finding none. 

She was floating in smooth water now — perhaps far 
on the overflooded fields. There was no sense of present 30 
danger to check the outgoing of her mind to the old home, 
and she strained her eyes against the curtain of gloom that 
she might seize the first sight of her whereabout — that 
she might catch some faint suggestion of the spot toward 
which all her anxieties tended. 35 



298 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Oh, how welcome the widening of that dismal watery 
level, the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the 
slowly defining blackness of objects above the glassy dark ! 
Yes, she must be out on the fields; those were the tops of 

5 hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie? Looking 
behind her, she saw the lines of black trees; looking be- 
fore her, there were none ; then the river lay before her. 
She seized an oar and began to paddle the boat forward 
with the energy of wakening hope ; the dawning seemed 

ioto advance more swiftly now she was in action, and she 
could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously 
on a mound where they had taken refuge. Onward she 
paddled and rowed by turns in the growing twilight; her 
wet clothes clung round her, and her streaming hair was 

1 5 dashed about by the wind, but she was hardly conscious 
of any bodily sensations — except a sensation of strength, 
inspired by mighty emotion. Along with the sense of danger 
and possible rescue for those long-remembered beings at the 
old home there was an undefined sense of reconcilement with 

20 her brother ; what quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief 
in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, 
when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are 
all one with each other in primitive mortal needs? Vaguely 
Maggie felt this, in the strong, resurgent love toward her 

25 brother that swept away all the later impressions of hard, 
cruel offense and misunderstanding, and left only the deep, 
underlying, unshakable memories of early union. 

But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and 
near to her Maggie could discern the current of the river. 

30 The dark mass must be — yes, it was — St. Ogg's. Ah, 
now she knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the 
well-known trees — the gray willows, the now yellowing 
chestnuts, and above them the old roof ! But. there was 
no color, no shape yet ; all was faint and dim. More and more 

35 strongly the energies seemed to come and put themselves 



MARIAN EVANS ("GEORGE ELIOT") 299 

forth, as if her life were a stored-up force that was being 
spent in this hour, unneeded for any future. 

She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else 
she would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach 
the- house; this was the thought that occurred to her, ass 
she imagined with more and more vividness the state of 
things round the old home. But then she might be carried 
very far down and be unable to guide her boat out of the 
current again. For the first time distinct ideas of danger 
began to press upon her, but there was no choice of courses, 10 
no room for hesitation, and she floated into the current. 
Swiftly she went now, without effort ; more and more clearly 
in the lessening distance and the growing light she began 
to discern the objects that she knew must be the well-known 
trees and roofs ; nay, she was not far off a rushing, muddy 15 
current that must be the strangely altered Ripple. 

There were floating masses in it that might dash against 
her boat as she passed and cause her to perish too soon. 
What were those masses ? 

For the first time Maggie's heart began to beat in an 20 
agony of dread. She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she 
was being floated along, more intensely conscious of the 
anticipated clash. But the horror was transient; it passed 
away before the oncoming warehouses of St. Ogg's. She 
had passed the mouth of the Ripple, then ; now, she must 25 
use all her skill and power to manage the boat and get it if 
possible out of the current. She could see now that the 
bridge was broken down ; she could see the masts of a stranded 
vessel far out over the watery field. But no boats were to 
be seen moving on the river ; such as had been laid hands on 30 
were employed in the flooded streets. 

With new resolution Maggie seized her oar and stood 
up again to paddle, but the now ebbing tide added to the 
swiftness of the river, and she was carried along beyond the 
bridge. She could hear shouts from the windows overlooking 35 



300 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

the river, as if the people there were calling to her. It was 
not till she had passed on nearly to Tofton that she could 
get the boat clear of the current. Then with one yearning 
look toward her uncle Deane's house, that lay farther down 
5 the river, she took to both her oars and rowed with all her 
might across the watery fields, back toward the Mill. Color 
was beginning to awake now, and as she approached the 
Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints of the trees, could 
see the old Scotch firs far to the right, and the home chest- 
10 nuts — oh, how deep they lay in the water — deeper than 
the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill — 
where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the 
Ripple — what had they meant ? But it was not the house — 
the house stood firm — drowned up to the first story, but 
15 still firm — or was it broken in at the end toward the Mill? 

With panting joy that she was there at last — joy that 
overcame all distress — Maggie neared the front of the 
house. At first she heard no sound ; she saw no object mov- 
ing. Her boat was on a level with the upstairs window. 
20 She called out in a loud piercing voice : 

"Tom, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here 
is Maggie!" 

Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, 
she heard Tom's voice — 
25 "Who is it? Have you brought a boat ? " 

" It is I, Tom, — Maggie. Where is mother ? " 

"She is not here ; she went to Garum the day before yester- 
day. I'll come down to the lower window. 

"Alone, Maggie?" said Tom, in a voice of deep aston- 
3oishment, as he opened the middle window, on a level with 
the boat. 

"Yes, Tom; God has taken care of me, to bring me to 
you. Get in quickly. Is there no one else ? " 

"No," said Tom, stepping into the boat; "I fear the man 
35 is drowned ; he was carried down the Ripple, I think, when 



MARIAN EVANS ("GEORGE ELIOT") 301 

part of the Mill fell with the crash of trees and stones against 
it ; I've shouted again and again, and there has been no an- 
swer. Give me the oars, Maggie." 

It was not till Tom had pushed off and they were on the 
wide water — he face to face with Maggie — that the full 5 
meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It 
came with so overpowering a force — it was such a new 
revelation to his spirit of the depths in life that had lain 
beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear — • 
that he was unable to ask a question. They sat mutely 10 
gazing at each other — Maggie with eyes of intense life 
looking out from a weary, beaten face; Tom pale with a 
certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy, though 
the lips were silent; and though he could ask no question, 
he guessed a story of almost miraculous, divinely protected 15 
effort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, 
and the lips found a word they could utter — the old, child- 
ish "Magsie!" 

Maggie could make no answer but a long, deep sob of 
that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain. 20 
As soon as she could speak, she said, "We will go to Lucy, 
Tom; we'll go and see if she is safe, and then we can help 
the rest." 

Tom rowed with untired vigor and with a different speed 
from poor Maggie's. The boat was soon in the current of 25 
the river again, and soon they would be at Tofton. 

"Park House stands high up out of the flood," said Maggie. 
"Perhaps they have got Lucy there." 

Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried 
toward them by the river. Some wooden machinery had 30 
just given way on one of the wharves, and huge fragments 
were being floated along. The sun was rising now, and the 
wide area of watery desolation was spread out in dreadful 
clearness around them ; in dreadful clearness floated onward 
the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company in a boat 35 



3 o2 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

that was working its way along under the Tofton houses 
observed their danger and shouted, " Get out of the current ! " 

But that could not be done at once ; and Tom. looking 
before him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, 
5 clinging together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass 
across the stream. 

"It is coming, Maggie!" Tom said, in a deep, hoarse 
voice, loosing the oars and clasping her. 

The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the 
10 water, and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph. 

But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck 
on the golden water. The boat reappeared, but brother and 
sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; 
living through again in one supreme moment the days when 
15 they had clasped their little hands in love and roamed the 
daisied fields together. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of the life of George Eliot. 2. Who was Maggie, 
and how did she come to be in the home of the Jakins? 3- What was 
the cause of the flood? Explain "equinox." (The stream called the 
Floss in this story is really the river Trent, on the banks of which George 
Eliot lived when a child.) 4. What is meant by the "Unseen Pity 
that would be with her to the end"? (Notice the capitals.) 5. What 
does Maggie's action when she discovers the flood show you of her 
character? 6. What do Bob Jakin's action and talk when Maggie 
calls him tell you of his character? (Prissy was Bob's wife; "the 
mother" was Bob's mother, who lived with the Jakin family.) 

7. What is meant by "the threads of ordinary association were 
broken" (page 297, line 9)? What figure of speech? 8. Explain 
"clutching the oar mechanically" (What figure in the adverb?), "the 
cessation of the rain," "the darkness was divided by the faintest light," 
"that awful visitation." 9. What docs Maggie's thought of her mother 
and Tom add to your idea of her? 10. Notice the picture of the slowly 
increasing light over the flooded fields and the river: first, the faintest 
light on the horizon, then the dim outlines of the flooded tree tops 



MARIAN EVANS (" GEORGE ELIOT ") 303 

and the buildings of St. Ogg's, then the tints of the trees, and finally the 
rising sun. George Eliot here shows her skill in painting a developing, 
changing picture. It is not a series of separate scenes, but is like a 
panorama, constantly moving. 

n. Explain "the widening of that dismal watery level," "cloudy 
firmament" "slowly defining blackness," "glassy dark" (page 298, 
lines 1-3). 12. How did Maggie know where she was and where the 
river lay? 13. Explain "a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty 
emotion" (line 16). What was the emotion? 14. Explain how the ebbing 
tide added to the swiftness of the river. What were the "heavy frag- 
ments hurrying down the Ripple" (page 300, line 12)? 15. What was 
Tom's first thought when he heard Maggie calling? 16. What was the 
cause of Tom's "awe and humiliation " (page 301, line 13)? 17. What 
does Tom's use of the old pet name "Magsie," which he had used when 
a child, tell you of his feelings ? 

18. Why was Maggie so happy? 19. When Maggie knew that her 
mother was safe and that Tom was rescued, what was her next thought 
(line 21)? (Lucy, her cousin, lived at Tofton, below St. Ogg's and the 
Mill.) 20. Explain the last sentence in the selection, and notice that 
there is nothing horrible in the description, but that the end is only 
suggested. This is a mark of a good writer — the ability to suggest 
clearly a powerful or tragic scene without describing it in detail. 

The first part of "The Mill on the Floss," telling of Maggie's child- 
hood, may be read at this time, also portions of " Silas Marner." George 
Eliot's novels, being as a rule more philosophical than romantic, may be 
read to better advantage a few years later. 



RUDYARD KIPLING 

1865- 

Among the English writers of recent times Rudyard Kipling 
is prominent because of his originality, his vigorous way of 
saying things, and his ability to discover and seize what is 
really important among many details. He has endeared 
himself to young people the world over by his pictures of 
Mowgli, Father and Mother Wolf, Baloo the Bear, Bagheera 
the Black Panther, and the score of other wild and half-wild 
creatures that figure in the Jungle Books. 

Mr. Kipling was born in India in 1865. His father was 
an English artist, who had gone to India to teach drawing 
and modeling in the art school at Bombay ; his mother was 
a beautiful young English woman whom the elder Kipling 
had married before leaving England. When their first child 
was born they gave him the name of Rudyard from a little 
lake in England where they had met before their marriage. 
The boy grew up sturdy and independent. He was fond of 
games and puzzles and very fond of books. When he was 
old enough to go to school his father took him to England 
and left him there to obtain his education. At school he 
wrote a number of stories and verses and was the editor of 
the school paper. 

At eighteen the young man returned to India and went 
to work for a newspaper in Lahore. This newspaper office 
was a queer place. It was frightfully hot in Lahore, but 
the building was covered with vines and shaded by tall fig 
trees. The compositors and pressmen were natives and 
wore the loose white robes of India, while the foreman wore 
also a big green turban. Mr. Kipling tells us how he himself 

304 



3 o6 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

used to work all night in his shirt sleeves, with the perspira- 
tion streaming down his face, reading proofs, making telegrams 
ready for the press, writing a little here and there, and taking 
care of the news, until just about daybreak, when the paper 
was printed and it was cool enough for him to go to sleep. 

For several years he spent much of his time with the 
army in India and wrote stories and poems of army life. 
Some of these were published in the paper at Lahore and 
afterwards put into a book, but the book was not successful. 

Then Mr. Kipling came to America to try to get his stories 
published, but no one would take them. Next he went to 
England and tried again, and for a while no one in England 
would publish them. But at last he found a man who agreed 
to try one small volume. When the English people had read 
this volume they wanted more, and he wrote more, and kept 
on writing more, until, almost before he knew it, he was famous. 

At about this time he came to America again, married a 
young American woman, and built a beautiful house on the 
slope of a mountain overlooking the Connect'cut River at 
Brattleboro, Vermont. The house has an overhanging roof 
and a wide porch and looks a little like some of the houses of 
India. In this house he wrote the two Jungle Books, "Cap- 
tains Courageous," "The Light that Failed," and several 
other volumes. 

After four years in the United States Mr. Kipling went 
back to England, where he has continued his literary work. 
He has served as a war correspondent in South Africa and in 
nearly all the countries of Europe. 

His most popular books, aside from those already named, 
are "Soldiers Three," "Plain Tales from the Hills," "Under 
the Deodars," "The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales/' 
"Wee Willie Winkie, and Other Child Stories," "Puck of 
Pook's Hill," the "Just So Stories" for children, "Barrack- 
Room Ballads," "The Day's Work," and "Kim." He is 
at his best as a writer of short stories. 



RUDYARD KIPLING 307 

RECESSIONAL 

[A recessional is a hymn sung by a choir in procession as they leave 
their places at the close of the church service. 

In 1897 there was held in England a great festival, or jubilee, to cele- 
brate the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria. It 
was such a celebration as England had never known. All the wealth 
and power of the empire were displayed. There were military and naval 
shows, sham battles, pageants, public meetings, music, fireworks — 
everything that could testify to England's greatness and show her pride. 
Mr. Kipling had been asked to write a poem for the occasion. He kept 
putting off the writing of it until nearly the end of the celebration, for 
he did not know just what to write. Then, as he saw the vanity that 
ran through it all, the thought came to him, "Are we not forgetting that, 
after all, God is the ruler of the universe and we are powerful only be- 
cause He allows us to be so?" And as the great festival came to its 
close, and the noise and shouting died away, and the warriors and kings 
of tributary nations returned to their homes, and the warships scattered, 
and the bonfires faded on the coast, he wrote this hymn, which is in 
reality a prayer, and the burden of it is "O God keep us from pride, lest 
we forget Thee — lest we forget." 

The poem was printed in the London Times on one of the last days of 
the jubilee, and had a powerful effect upon the nation. It sobered every 
one and made men feel that there was at least one thing which should 
not be forgotten.] 

God of our fathers, known of old — 
Lord of our far-flung battle line — 
Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine — 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

The tumult' and the shouting dies — 
The captains and the kings depart — 
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 



308 NINETEENTH CENTURY — ENGLISH 

Far-called our navies melt away — 
On dune and headland sinks the fire — 
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre ! 
5 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 

Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe — 
Such boasting as the Gentiles use, 
10 Or lesser breeds without the Law — 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard — 
I5 All valiant dust that builds on dust, 

And guarding calls not Thee to guard. 
For frantic boast and foolish word, 
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord ! 

Amen. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i . Give an outline of Mr. Kipling's life. 2 . Tell how the " Recessional " 
came to be written. What is a recessional? 3. Explain "our far-flung 
battle line " (page 307, line 2). Think of the forts of Great Britain as 
extending around all her colonies; "Dominion over palm and pine" 
(Where does the palm grow? the pine?) 4. Explain "The tumult and 
the shouting dies " (line 7). 5. Why is " an humble and a contrite heart " 
(line 10) called an ancient sacrifice? (See Psalm li, 17.) 

6. What was "our pomp of yesterday" and why is it compared with 
Nineveh and Tyre (page 308, line 3) ? 7. " Gentiles " (line 9) refers to all 
who do not believe in God ; "lesser breeds without the Law" to less civil- 
ized races, who do not know God's law as given in the Bible. " The reck- 
ing tube" (line 14) is the cannon, reeking or emitting smoke and fumes; 



RUDYARD KIPLING 309 

the "iron shard" is a piece of broken bomb ; "dust " refers to the old idea 
that man was formed "of the dust of the ground" (Genesis ii, 7). 
What then is meant by "valiant dust that builds on dust" ? 8. " Guard- 
ing, calls not Thee to guard" (line 16) refers to the psalm, "Except 
the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" (Psalm cxxvii, 
1). 9. What is the special force of the phrase "Lest we forget," so often 
repeated, and what does it mean? 10. What was Mr. Kipling's object in 
writing these verses? 11. Memorize the poem. 

Psalms xxix, cxxv, and many others also emphasize God's power as 
the protector of a nation that serves him. It will be interesting to com- 
pare this poem with Whittier's "Centennial Hymn" and Lanier's "Cen- 
tennial Cantata," which were written for a great national celebration 
in America. 



VI. NINETEENTH-CENTURY 
AMERICAN LITERATURE 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

1782-1852 

In an old brown farmhouse near the village of Salisbury, 
New Hampshire, somewhat above the highroad and on a 
hill which overlooks the valley of the Merrimac, was born, 
in 1782, the greatest of American orators, Daniel Webster. 
It was three months after the surrender of Cornwallis, and 
Captain Ebenezer Webster, the boy's father, had but recently 
returned from fighting in the Continental army under Wash- 
ington. Captain Webster was a sturdy farmer, loved and 
respected by his neighbors, but poor in this world's goods 
and scarcely able by the utmost labor to get from his rocky 
hillside farm a living for his large family of children — of 
whom Daniel was the ninth. 

Daniel soon grew into boyhood. He was a frail and some- 
what sickly lad, not able to do full work on the farm, though 
the necessities of the family were such that he often worked 
beyond his strength. When he could not labor in the field 
he sawed logs at the mill — for his father had built a rude 
sawmill down by the creek, where, as he cleared his land, he 
turned the forest into lumber. 

Young Daniel early read and reread the few good books 
which he found on the family bookshelf. The Bible, Shake- 
speare, Milton, and Addison were his daily food. He was so 

310 



3 i2 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

eager to learn that his father determined to make every 
sacrifice to give him an education. So when he was about 
fourteen, it happened that he rode away one day behind his 
father on the back of the old farm horse to Phillips Academy 
at Exeter. After nine months at Exeter and some private 
tutoring he was able to enter Dartmouth College as a fresh- 
man in the autumn of 1797, and there distinguished himself 
as a speaker, debater, and as the best scholar in his class. 

After graduating, in 1801, he began the study of law with 
an attorney at Salisbury. But Ezekiel Webster, his brother, 
was also trying to get an education, and after having well 
begun his course was unable to continue it for lack of money. 
His father could not help him any more, so Daniel deferred 
his own plans, taught school at Fryeburg, Maine, gave Eze- 
kiel all his earnings, and helped him to finish his course. 

When Ezekiel had been provided for, Daniel returned to 
his law study in Salisbury and completed it in Boston. His 
first practice was in Boscawen, New Hampshire, the town 
adjoining Salisbury. He selected this place in order that 
he might be near home and help his father, who was growing 
old. At his father's death, a few years later, he removed, to 
Portsmouth, where he attracted much attention as a speaker 
and in 18 13 was elected to Congress. 

From that time until his death, in 1852, Webster was 
almost constantly in public life. At the close of his second 
term in Congress he declined reelection, removed to Boston, 
and for a few years devoted himself to his law practice, 
winning during that time the celebrated Dartmouth College 
case against the state of New Hampshire. But he was soon 
elected to Congress from Massachusetts, and for thirty years 
thereafter served the nation as representative, senator, and 
Secretary of State. He was twice Secretary, once under 
William Henry Harrison and again under Fillmore. Sev- 
eral times he was urged for the presidency, but he made mis- 
takes which cost him the nomination. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 313 

Webster's greatest speeches were the Oration upon the 
Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pil- 
grims, in 1820; the Address at the Laying of the Corner 
Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument (known as the First 
Bunker Hill Oration), in 1825; the Eulogy on Adams and 
Jefferson, in 1826 ; and the Reply to Hayne in the United 
States Senate, in 1830. 

As Webster became older he entirely outgrew the weak- 
ness of his earlier years and was a magnificent specimen of 
physical manhood. He was nearly six feet tall, with an 
enormous depth of chest, massive brows, dark, deep-set 
eyes, and hair as black as night. When he arose to speak 
he commanded instant attention, and his deep, wonderfully 
modulated voice thrilled his hearers beyond our power to 
realize. Those who saw him were awed by his presence. 
Carlyle called him "a parliamentary Hercules, whom one 
would back against the world." 

BUNKER HILL 

[About the year 181 5 a number of patriotic gentlemen of Boston con- 
ceived the idea of a great monument on Breed's Hill (now called Bunker 
Hil]), to mark the site of the first important battle of the Revolution. 
A society known as the Bunker Hill Monument Association was formed, 
subscriptions were received, and within ten years the plan was so far 
advanced that they were ready to build the monument. It was proposed 
to lay the corner stone on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle ; that 
is, on June 17, 1825. The day arrived. Forty survivors of the battle 
had been found and assembled in Boston as the guests of the state of 
Massachusetts. Two hundred other Revolutionary veterans were also 
present. General Lafayette, who was at that time visiting in America, 
received a special invitation to assist in the ceremonies. A great pro- 
cession moved from the statehouse, over Charlestown bridge to Bunker 
Hill. The old chaplain of Colonel Prescott's regiment, then far ad- 
vanced in years, offered a prayer — as he had offered one on that morn- 
ing fifty years before, when the colonial troops were going into action. 
In a cavity beneath the stone were placed maps and accounts of the battle, 



314 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

specimens of Continental coins and currency, a piece of Plymouth Rock, 
copies of Boston newspapers, and various other interesting memorials ; 
General Lafayette spread a trowelful of cement, and the stone was low- 
ered to its place. Then, on the northern slope of the hill, before an audi- 
ence of twenty thousand and upon a platform decorated with flags and 
banners, with Lafayette and the Revolutionary heroes beside him, Webster 
delivered his great oration. Our selection contains three extracts from it.] 

We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must 
forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that who- 
soever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may be- 
hold that the place is not undistinguished where the first 

5 great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this 
structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of 
that event to every class and every age. We wish that 
infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal 
lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it and be 

10 solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that 
labor may look up here and be proud in the midst of its toil. 
We wish that in those days of disaster which, as they come on 
all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding 
patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward and be assured that 

15 the foundations of our national power still stand strong. 
We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among 
the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, 
may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling 
of dependence and gratitude. W T e wish, finally, that the last 

20 object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and 
the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something 
which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his 
country. Let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming ; let 
the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day 

25 linger and play on its summit. . . . 

Venerable Men ! you have come down to us from a 
former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out 
your lives that you might behold this joyous day. You 



DANIEL WEBSTER 315 

are now where you stood fifty years ago this very hour, 
with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, 
in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered ! The 
same heavens are indeed over your heads ; the same ocean 
rolls at your feet ; but all else, how changed ! You hear now 5 
no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke 
and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground 
strewed with the dead and the dying, the impetuous charge, 
the steady and successful repulse, the loud call to repeated 
assault, the summoning of all that is manly to repeated re- 10 
sistance, a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an 
instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death 
— all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no 
more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, 
its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives 15 
and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and look- 
ing with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, 
have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy 
.population come out to welcome and greet you with an uni- 
versal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position 20 
appropriately lying at the foot of this mount and seeming 
fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you 
but your country's own means of distinction and defense. 
All is peace ; and God has granted you this sight of your 
country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave forever. 25 
He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of 
your patriotic toils, and he has allowed us, your sons and 
countrymen, to meet you here and in the name of the present 
generation, in the name of your country, in the name of 
liberty, to thank you ! . . . 3° 

Veterans ! you are the remnant of many a well fought field. 
You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Mon- 
mouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. 
Veterans of half a century ! when in your youthful days, you 
put everything at hazard in your country's cause, good as 35 



316 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest 
hopes did not stretch forward to an hour like this ! At a 
period to which you could not reasonably have expected to 
arrive ; at a moment of national prosperity, such as you could 
s never have foreseen, you are now met, here, to enjoy the fel- 
lowship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of an 
universal gratitude. ... 

May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining 
years, and bless them ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of Webster's life. 2. Describe the occasion upon 
which this speech was delivered. 3. What reasons does Webster give for 
the erection of Bunker Hill monument ? 4. What difference in meaning 
is there between "not undistinguished," and "distinguished" ? W T hich is 
the better expression here, and why? 5. Explain "among the pointed 
spires of so many temples." "Let it rise till it meet the sun," etc. Note 
this fine picture of the sun touching the tall shaft. 

6. The orator now turns to the survivors of the battle and addresses 
them, personally. How many were present? About how old should 
you expect the youngest of them to be? 7. What two scenes are con- 
trasted in the sentences that follow? Fix them firmly in mind. What 
does the change indicate regarding America? "Yonder proud ships," 
which the audience could easily see from where they were standing, were 
government vessels anchored in Charlestown Navy Yard. 

8. The orator now turns to the two hundred Revolutionary veterans 
who were seated in another part of the platform. What battles of the 
Revolution does he mention? What thoughts would the mention of 
these names be likely to awaken in the minds of the veterans ? 

Other readings from Webster: Extracts from the Reply to Hayne 
and from the Plymouth Oration. Read also Holmes's "Grandmother's 
Story of Bunker Hill Battle." 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 

1782-1850 

The same year that saw the birth of Webster marked 
also the coming of another great American orator, John C. 
Calhoun. He was born on Calhoun Creek, not far from Abbe- 
ville, South Carolina, and was of Scotch-Irish parentage, 
his father, Patrick Calhoun, being the leader of a small 
pioneer colony. There was no chance for the boy to go 
to school and few books for him to read, but when he was 
thirteen he spent a year in the family of an older sister in 
Georgia, and there he had a great awakening. His sister's 
husband, the Reverend Moses Waddell, had charge of a cir- 
culating library, which the boy first tasted and then straight- 
way devoured. When he returned home he took up the farm 
life again, but he did not forget the vision which he had had of 
a broader life, and he determined to get an education. 

At nineteen he went to school for the first time. It was 
a strange school and was kept by his brother-in-law, Dr. 
Waddell, who had then moved to Willington, on the Savannah 
River. The students lived in log houses in the woods and for 
the most part boarded themselves. At sunrise every morn- 
ing Dr. Waddell came to the door of his log house and blew a 
horn. The boys answered with horns from their log houses 
and came to Dr. Waddell's for prayers. Then each received 
a chair marked with his name and went off into the woods 
to study. In cold weather bonfires were lighted, and at 
stated hours the boys came in for recitations. 

After two years at Willington, Calhoun was able to enter 
the junior class at Yale, graduating at the end of another 

317 



318 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

two years with high honors. He studied law at Litchfield, 
Connecticut, and later with an attorney at Charleston. He 
then opened an office in Abbeville and was soon elected to the 
legislature of South Carolina. From there it was but a step 
to Congress, which he entered in 1811, at the age of twenty- 
nine. In Congress Calhoun soon became one of the great 
debaters and the champion of the South. Webster was his 
strongest opponent, but though the two men clashed in man} 
a debate they had the highest admiration for each other. 
Webster said of Calhoun : 

His power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the 
closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his 
manner. He had the basis, the indispensable basis, of all high 
character, and that was unspotted integrity, unimpeached honor. 

Calhoun was striking in appearance. He was more than 
six feet tall, slender, erect, with somewhat harsh and angular 
features and piercing eyes, which, when he was angry, gleamed 
dangerously out from under his shaggy eyebrows. His hair 
was thick and bushy, his voice strong and somewhat shrill, 
his gestures stiff, his manner brusque and not trained to 
please. Yet he spoke with such clearness, such force and 
earnestness, that men were compelled to listen and to heed. 
His firmness gave him the name of the " cast-iron man." 

Calhoun was made Secretary of War in Monroe's cabinet 
in 181 7 and was urged for the presidency in 1824. After 
being defeated in convention he was elected vice president, 
serving one term with John Quincy Adams and a second term 
with Jackson. He was made Secretary of State under Tyler 
and was largely instrumental in securing the annexation of 
Texas. Among his most important speeches are thos: on the 
Tariff (1816), The Oregon Bill (1843), and Slavery (1850). 
This last speech was written when he was in failing health, 
shortly before his death, and was read in the Senate by a 
brother senator. 



320 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

PEACE 

[This selection is from a speech on the Oregon question, delivered in 
the Senate, March 16, 1846. Both the United States and England 
claimed the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, from California 
north to Alaska. It was thought that war would result, hut owing to 
the efforts of Calhoun and other advocates of peace a treaty was made 
in 1846, in which the present boundary (49 ) was fixed. This extract 
contains only one of Calhoun's arguments. The entire speech may 
be found in Volume IV of his Complete Works.] 

I am, on principle, opposed to war and in favor of peace 
because I regard peace as a positive good and war as a posi- 
tive evil. As a good, I shall ever cling to peace, so long as 
it can be preserved consistently with the safety and honor of 

5 the country ; and as opposed to war, I shall ever resist it, 
so long as it may be resisted consistently with the same con- 
siderations. . . . 

Providence has given us an inheritance stretching across 
the entire continent, from east to west, from ocean to ocean, 

10 and from north to south, covering by far the greater and 
better part of its temperate zone. It comprises a region 
not only of vast extent, but abundant in all resources, excel- 
lent in climate, fertile and exuberant in soil, capable of sus- 
taining in the plentiful enjoyment of all the necessaries of 

15 life a population of ten times our present number. Our great 
mission, as a people, is to occupy this vast domain, to convert 
the forests into cultivated fields, to drain the swamps and 
morasses and cover them with rich harvests, to build up cities, 
towns, and villages in every direction, and to unite the whole 

:oby the most rapid intercourse between all the parts. War 
would but impede the fulfillment of this high mission, by 
absorbing the means and diverting the energies which would 
be devoted to the purpose. On the contrary, secure peace; 
and time, under the guidance of a sagacious and cautious 

25 policy, will speedily accomplish the whole. Our population 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 321 

is now increasing at the rate of about six hundred thousand 
annually — and is progressing with increased rapidity every 
year. At the end of the next twenty-five years it ought to 
reach to upwards of forty millions. With this vast increase 
it is roiling westwardly with a strong and deep current and 5 
will by the end of that period have spread from ocean to ocean. 
Its course is irresistible. ... At the same rate we shall at 
the end of another twenty-five years have increased to up- 
wards of eighty millions of people, when with one foot on the 
Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, and occupying a posi- 10 
tion between the eastern and the western coasts of the old 
continent, we shall be better, able to control the commerce 
of both oceans and to exert an influence over both continents 
than any other country in the world. If we avoid war and 
adhere to peace, all this will be effected. . . . War may make 15 
us great, but let it never be forgotten that peace only can 
make us both great and free. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Calhoun's life. 2. Describe the circumstances 
under which this speech was delivered. 3. Describe the condition of the 
country west of the Mississippi River at the time of this speech. 4. The 
population of the United States was then about twenty millions. What 
do you think of the estimate that the land could support ten times as 
many ? What is the present population ? 5. What has been done toward 
performing the various things mentioned by Calhoun as being a part 
of our great mission? Note each clause separately. 6. Read carefully 
the last sentence, and explain how "peace only can make us both great 
and/ree." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 

1783-1859 

At the end of the American Revolution, and just as the 
British soldiers were about to leave New York, the family 
of Mr. William Irving on William Street were rejoiced at 
the birth of a son*, the eleventh child that had come into 
their home. This was on the third of April, 1783. As 
General Washington was then in the mind of every loyal 
American, and as the people of New York were then anx- 
iously awaiting his entry into the city, what could be more 
natural in naming this boy than to call him Washington? 
At all events, that is the name his parents gave him — Wash- 
ington Irving. 

It is said that when the lad was about six years old, General 
Washington, then president of our new nation, happened 
to be in New York. The old Scotch nurse of the Irving 
family determined that the president should see his young 
namesake ; so she followed the great man into a shop, leading 
young Washington Irving by the hand, and said, " Please, 
your honor, here's a bairn was named after you." The 
president smiled, placed his hand on the boy's head, and gave 
him his blessing. He did not then suspect that in later years 
this same boy would write the greatest of his biographies, 
the "Life of Washington." 

Young Irving grew up like most boys and was distin- 
guished chiefly for his good nature and his happy disposi- 
tion. He was fond of reading, but not of hard study, and 
though his father would have been glad to send him to college, 
he did not care to go. Instead, he read law in the office of 
a New York attorney and prepared to practice. 

322 



WASHINGTON IRVING 323 

But about this time his health failed, and he was obliged 
to give up work. His friends urged him to go to Europe, 
thinking that the voyage might benefit him. He went, and 
remained abroad two years. When he came back he was well 
and strong again and began the practice of law in New York, 
writing during his leisure hours. It is interesting to remember 
that he- was one of the lawyers employed at the trial of Aaron 
Burr in 1807. 

He began his literary work by publishing, with a friend, 
a paper called Salmagundi, the purpose of which was to 
make fun of all the foolish things that were to be seen in 
New York society. This paper was very successful, and 
Irving followed it by writing a comic history of New York, 
which he pretended was written by an old gentleman named 
Knickerbocker, "a small, brisk-looking old gentleman, dressed 
in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a 
small cocked hat." This gentleman, he said, had disappeared 
from the hotel where he had been living, and had left with 
his landlord the manuscript of this history because he could 
not pay his board bill. The history begins very seriously, 
and many readers went through a number of pages before 
they began to see that the writer of it was laughing at them. 

Irving was never in a hurry about anything, and for more 
than five years he did not follow up his success by writing 
another book. Instead, he went into business with his 
brothers, but the War of 181 2 and the hard times that followed 
it ruined their plans. During this time Irving went to Eng- 
land and for several years helped his brother Peter, who had 
charge of their English branch, but at length the business 
failed completely, and he then found that he must write in 
order to support himself. 

So he went to London and wrote "The Sketch Book," 
which contains the now famous stories, "Rip Van Winkle" 
and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This was followed 
by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." In 



324 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

England he made friends with Scott and visited at Abbots- 
ford. After some five years he went to Spain and lived for 
a time in that beautiful old Moorish ruin, "The Alhambra," 
at Granada. In Spain he wrote the "Life and Voyages of 
Christopher Columbus," his first serious history, which brought 
him both fame and wealth. Then followed the "Conquest of 
Granada," "Spanish Voyages of Discovery," and "The 
Alhambra." 

After seventeen years abroad Irving came back to America 
and made a journey over the Western prairies and moun- 
tains, writing the "Tour of the Prairies," "Astoria," and 
"The Adventures of Captain Bonneville." But he grew 
tired of this roving life, and in 1835, at the a S e °f fifty- two, 
he bought an old Dutch farmhouse at Tarrytown on the 
Hudson (it was the old Van Tassel house mentioned in the 
"Legend of Shepy Hollow") and added wings and gables to 
it until he had made of it a beautiful home. He first called 
it " Wolfert's Roost," but afterwards it was known as " Sunny- 
side." 

Irving never married, but he loved his brothers' chil- 
dren as if they had been his own, and here in this fine old 
country house he gathered them around him. In 1842, 
when Tyler was president and Daniel Webster was secre- 
tary of state, Irving was appointed United States ambas- 
sador to Spain. He accepted the post with some regret, 
remained abroad four years, and then came back to enjoy 
the home and friends that he had left. His last and per- 
haps greatest work was the "Life of Washington," which 
was published only a short time before his death, in 1859. 
During his later years he became a friend of both Dickens 
and Thackeray. Dickens wrote that he had upon his shelves, 
and in his thoughts, and in his heart of hearts everything 
that Irving had ever written, and that he cared more for 
Irving's praise than for that of any living man. Thackeray 
called him "the dear and good Washington Irving." 



326 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

We always think of Irving as a cheery, kind-hearted, 
fun-loving gentleman, a little old-fashioned perhaps, but 
thoroughly delightful — such a person as we should all like 
to know and with whom we should delight to talk. 



RIP VAN WINKLE 

[The story of Rip Van Winkle, probably the most popular of all 
Irving's tales, is from "The Sketch Book," which was published in 1820. 
It is here somewhat abridged.l 

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must re- 
member the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered 
branch of the Appalachian family and are seen away to the 
west of the river, swelling up to a noble height and lording 

sit over the surrounding country. Every change of season, 
every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, 
produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of 
these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives 
far and near as perfect barometers. When the weather is 

10 fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple and print 
their bold outlines on the clear evening sky ; but sometimes 
when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather 
a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the 
last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown 

1 5 of glory. 

At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may 
have descried the light smoke curling up from a village whose 
shingle roofs gleam among the trees just where the blue tints 
of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer 

20 landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having 
been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early 
times of the province, just about the beginning of the govern- 
ment of the good Peter Stuy vesant (may he rest in peace !) , 
and there were some of the houses of the original settlers 



WASHINGTON IRVING 327 

standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought 
from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts sur- 
mounted with weathercocks. 

In that same village and in one of these very houses (which, 
to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather- 5 
beaten), there Lived many years since, while the country 
was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured 
fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle. . . . 

Rip was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled 
dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or 10 
brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, 
and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. 
If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect 
contentment ; but his wife kept continually dinning in his 
ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was 15 
bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night her tongue 
was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure 
to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but 
one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by 
frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his 20 
shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said 
nothing. . . . 

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was 
as much henpecked as his master ; for Dame Van Winkle 
regarded them as companions in idleness and even looked 25 
upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's 
going so often astray. . . . 

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as 
years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows 
with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows 30 
keener with constant use. For a long while he used to con- 
sole himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind 
of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle 
personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench 
before a small inn designated by a rubicund portrait of his 35 



328 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the 
shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly 
over village gossip or telling endless sleepy stories about 
nothing. . . . 
5 From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length 
routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in 
upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members 
all to naught. . . . 

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair, and his 

ioonly alternative to escape from the labor of the farm and 
clamor of his wife was to take gun in hand and stroll away 
into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at 
the foot of a tree and share the contents of his wallet with 
Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer in 

is persecution. 

"Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a 
dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou 
shalt never want a friend to stand by thee !" 

Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's 

20 face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated 
the sentiment with all his heart. 

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip 
had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of 
the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport 

25 of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and 
reechoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, 
he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, 
covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of 
a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could 

30 overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich wood- 
land. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far 
below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the 
reflection of a purple cloud or the sail of a lagging bark here 
and there sleeping on its glassy bosom and at last losing itself 

35 in the blue highlands. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 329 

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain 
glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with frag- 
ments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the 
reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay 
musing on this scene ; evening was gradually advancing ; 5 
the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over 
the valleys ; he saw that it would be dark long before he could 
reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought 
of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. 

As he was about to descend he heard a voice from a dis- 10 
tance hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He 
looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its 
solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy 
must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when 
he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air, 15 
"Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" At the same time 
Wolf bristled up his back and giving a low growl skulked to 
his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip 
now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him ; he looked 
anxiously in the same direction and perceived a strange 20 
figure slowly toiling up the rocks and bending under the weight 
of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to 
see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, 
but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need 
of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. 25 

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the 
singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short 
square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair and a griz- 
zled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion — 
a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist, several pairs of 30 
breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows 
of buttons down the sides and bunches at the knees. He 
bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, 
and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with 
the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new 35 



33Q NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

acquaintance, Rip complied, with his usual alacrity, and mutu- 
ally relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, 
apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they 
ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, 
5 like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, 
or rather, cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged 
path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing 
it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder- 
showers which often take place in mountain heights, he 

10 proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a 
hollow, like a small amphitheater, surrounded by perpendicular 
precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their 
branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure 
sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time 

15 Rip and his companion had labored on in silence ; for though 
the former marveled greatly what could be the object of 
carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was 
something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown 
that inspired awe and checked familiarity. 

20 On entering the amphitheater new objects of wonder 
presented themselves. On the level spot in the center was 
a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins. 
They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion ; some 
wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their 

25 belts, and most of them had enormous breeches of similar 
style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were 
peculiar : one had a large beard, broad face, and small pig- 
gish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of 
nose and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off 

30 with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards of various 
shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the 
commander. He was a stout old gentleman with a weather- 
beaten countenance ; iie wore a laced doublet, broad belt and 
hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and 

35 high-heeled shoes with roses in them. The whole group 



WASHINGTON IRVING 331 

reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting in the 
parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, which had ■ 
been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. 

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though 
these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they 5 
maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, 
and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure 
he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness 
of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they 
were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals 10 
of thunder. 

As Rip and his companion approached them, they sud- 
denly desisted from their play and stared at him with such 
fixed statue-like gaze and such strange, uncouth, lack-luster 
countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his 15 
knees smote together. His companion now emptied the 
contents of the keg into large flagons and made signs to him 
to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trem- 
bling ; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence and then 
returned to their game. 20 

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He 
even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste 
the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of 
excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul and was 
soon tempted to repeat the draft. One taste provoked 25 
another, and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that 
at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his 
head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep 
sleep. 

On waking he found himself on the green knoll whence 30 
he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his 
eyes — it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were 
hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle 
was wheeling aloft and breasting the pure mountain breeze. 
" Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He 35 



332 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep — the strange 

• man with a keg of liquor, the mountain ravine, the wild 
retreat among the rocks, the woebegone party at ninepins, 
the flagon — "Oh ! that flagon ! that wicked flagon !" thought 

5 Rip, "what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle !" 

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, 
well-oiled fowling piece he found an old firelock lying by 
him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and 
the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave 

10 roisters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having 
dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, 
too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after 
a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted 
his name, but all in vain ; the echoes repeated his whistle and 

15 shout, but no dog was to be seen. 

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's 
gambol and if he met with any of the party, to demand his 
dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the 
joints and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain 

20 beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and if this frolic 
should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a 
blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty 
he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he 
and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; 

25 but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming 
down it, leaping from rock to rock and filling the glen with 
babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble 
up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of 
birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up 

30 or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils 
or tendrils from tree to tree and spread a kind of network in 
his path. 

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened 
through the cliffs to the amphitheater, but no traces of such 

35 opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable 



WASHINGTON IRVING 333 

wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of 
feathery foam and fell into a broad deep basin, black from 
the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor 
Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled 
after his dog ; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock 5 
of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that over- 
hung a sunny precipice, and who, secure in their elevation, 
seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexi- 
ties. What was to be done? The morning was passing 
away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He 10 
grieved to give up his dog and gun ; he dreaded to meet his 
wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. 
He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and with a 
heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward. 

As he approached the village, he met a number of people, 15 
but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, 
for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the 
country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion 
from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at 
him with equal marks of surprise and whenever they cast 20 
their eyes upon him invariably stroked their chins. The 
constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involun- 
tarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his 
beard had grown a foot long ! 

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop 25 
of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him and 
pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which 
he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he 
passed. The very village was altered ; it was larger and more 
populous. There were rows of houses which he had never 30 
seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts 
had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors — 
strange faces at the windows — everything was strange. His 
mind now misgave him ; he began to doubt whether both he 
and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this 35 



334 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

was his native village, which he had left but the day before. 
There stood the Kaatskill Mountains ; there ran the silver 
Hudson at a distance ; there was every hill and dale pre- 
cisely as it had always been. Rip was sorely perplexed. 
5 "That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor 
head sadly!" 

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his 
own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting 
every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. 

10 He found the house gone to decay — ■ the roof fallen in, the 
windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half- 
starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip 
called him byname, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and 
passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed. " My very dog," 

15 sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me ! " 

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van 
Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, 
and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all 
his connubial fears ; he called loudly for his wife and children ; 

20 the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and 
then all again was silence. 

He now hurried forth and hastened to his old resort, the 
village inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden 
building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some 

25 of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, 
and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by 
Jonathan Doolittle." 

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his 
rusty fowling piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women 

30 and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the 
tavern politicians. ... A knowing, self-important old gen- 
tleman in a sharp cocked hat demanded, in an austere tone, 
what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder 
and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a 

35 riot in the village. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 335 

The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no 
harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neigh- 
bors who used to keep about the tavern. 

" Well, who are they? Name them." 

Rip bethought himself a moment and inquired, " Where's 5 
Nicholas Vedder?" 

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man 
replied, in a thin, piping voice, " Nicholas Vedder! why, he 
is dead and gone these eighteen years ! There was a wooden 
tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about 10 
him, but that's rotten and gone too." 

" Where's Brom Dutcher?" 

"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; 
some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — 
others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Anthony's 15 
Nose. I don't know. He never came back again." 

"Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" 

"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, 
and is now in Congress." 

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in 20 
his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the 
world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such 
enormous lapses of time and of matters which he could not 
understand : war, Congress, Stony Point — he had no courage 
to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does 25 
nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" 

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle ! " exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be 
sure ! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." 

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, 
as he went up the mountain ; apparently as lazy and cer- 30 
tainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely con- 
founded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he 
was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilder- 
ment the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was and 
what was his name ? 35 



336 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

i 

" God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end ; " I'm not my- 
self — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — that's 
somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, 
but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my 
5 gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't 
tell what's my name, or who I am ! " 

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, 
wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their fore- 
heads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun 
10 and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very 
suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat 
retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a 
fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a 
peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in 
15 her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. " Hush, 
Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man won't 
hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the 
tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his 
mind. "What is your name, my good woman ? " asked he. 
20 "Judith Gardenier." 

"And your father's name?" 

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's 
twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, 
and never has been heard of since. His dog came home 
25 without him, but whether he shot himself or was carried 
away by the Indians nobody can tell. I was then but a little 
girl.'; 

Rip had but one question more to ask, but he put it with 
a faltering voice : 
30 "Where's your mother?" 

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke 

a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler." 

The honest man could contain himself no longer. He 

caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your 

35 father ! " cried he — "Young Rip Van Winkle once — old 



WASHINGTON IRVING 337 

Rip Van Winkle now ! Does nobody know poor Rip Van 
Winkle?" 

All stood amazed, until an old woman tottering out from 
among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering 
under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed : "Sure enough ! 
it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself ! Welcome home again, 
old neighbor. Where have you been these twenty long years ? " 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

Introduction: 1. Give a sketch of Irving's life. 

The scene of the story: 2. Locate on a map the Catskill Mountains 
(notice the old Dutch spelling, Kaatskill). Why are the mountains 
likened to barometers ? 3. What figure is in " clothed in blue and purple " ? 
in "print their bold outlines"? "hood of gray vapors"? "like a crown of 
glory" ? What effect does this opening description have upon you, as you 
read it ? 4. Why are the mountains called fairy mountains, and how does 
the word prepare you for the story that follows ? 5. Describe the village. 
6. Who was Peter Stuyvesant ? 

The characters: 7. What sort of character was Rip Van Winkle? 
8. Discuss "a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue 
is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use." 9. Why 
were the idlers called sages and philosophers? 10. Explain "rubicund 
portrait," "termagant," "call the members all to naught," "reciprocated 
the sentiment." 

Rip's ramble and sleep: n. What did Rip see from the summit of 
the mountain? 12. Define "herbage," "shagged," "impending cliffs." 
13. Explain the figures in "crowned the brow of a precipice," "lordly 
Hudson," "lagging bark," "sleeping on its glassy bosom." 14. Notice 
the touch of loneliness given to the picture by the solitary crow winging 
its flight through the evening sky. What words in the description add 
to this effect? 15. Explain "vague apprehension," "usual alacrity," 
"amphitheater," "doublets," "visages," "weather-beaten countenance," 
"hanger," "shoes with roses in them," "Dom'nie." 16. In describing 
the seriousness of this pleasure party, Irving is making fun of the old 
Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam. 17. Define "uncouth," "lack- 
luster," "flagons," "quaffed." 18. Explain "reiterated his visits to the 
flagon." 



338 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

The awakening: 19. How much time is supposed to have passed be- 
tween the events spoken of in lines 29 and 30, page 331 ? 20. What figure 
of speech is in " wheeling " ? 21. Define "woebegone," "roisters," "made 
shift." 22. Name the points in the description of Rip's awakening that 
show the passing of a long space of time. 23. Point out the chief fig- 
ures of speech. 

The return to the village and the recognition: 24. What changes in the 
village and the people showed the passage of time ? 2 5 . D efine ' ' misgave , ' ' 
"addled," "skulking." 26. What is the allusion in "unkind cut" ? (See 
page 334, line 14.) 27. Was it his dog Wolf that Rip saw? Give reasons 
for your answer. 28. Notice the feeling of loneliness in the description 
of the deserted house. Explain "connubial fears." What feeling must 
Rip have had when he " called loudly for his wife and children " ? 29. What 
important fact is hinted at in the difference between the old and the new 
signs on the tavern? 30. Explain "precise counterpart," "his own 
identity." 31. What was Rip's last question, and why did he leave it 
until the last ? 

General: 32. Point out in this selection examples of Irving's humor 
or love of fun. What do you think is the best of them? ^- Point out 
the descriptive passages that you like best. Compare Irving's style 
with that of Carlyle, of Macaulay, of Ruskin. What do you think 
especially distinguishes Irving from these? 

Other readings from Irving : The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The 
Specter Bridegroom from the "Sketch Book"; The Legend of the 
Arabian Astrologer from "The Alhambra." 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 
1789-1851 

Cooper was the earliest of our real American novelists. 
He wrote tales of Indians and trappers, of the forest, and of 
fighting on land and sea. He was the first to write a really 
good story of American life and to show the romance and 
heroism of the American pioneers. 

Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789, 
the year in which Washington was elected first president of 
the United States. When the boy was a little more than a 
year old the Cooper family moved from New Jersey to central 
New York, which was then almost an unbroken forest, in- 
habited by Indians and wild beasts. Cooper's father had 
come into possession of a large tract of forest land around 
Otsego Lake, had made a clearing and founded a settlement 
which was known as Coopers town. It was there that he took 
his family. Not long afterward he built among the trees 
by the shore of the lake a large mansion after the fashion 
of the manor houses of England and called it Otsego Hall. 

Young Cooper's childhood was thus spent in the wilderness. 
He had books and a cultured home, with all the advantages 
that his father could give him, — for the elder Cooper was 
esteemed a wealthy man for those days, — but he was still 
in the midst of the forest, and his only friends, outside of the 
Hall, were trappers, woodsmen, and Indians. It is no wonder 
that he came to know the forest as few writers have known it, 
and that the descriptions with which he filled his books were 
true and sympathetic. 

Cooperstown grew rapidly, and a school was soon estab- 
lished, in which the boy took his first schooling. Then he 

339 



340 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

was sent to Albany to prepare for college, and at thirteen 
went to Yale. Instead of graduating he decided to pre- 
pare for the navy, and at seventeen took his first step by 
shipping as common sailor on a merchantman bound for 
London, Gibraltar, and other foreign ports. The voyage 
lasted sixteen months. On his return his father, who was a 
member of Congress, secured an appointment for him as 
midshipman. 

He served three years in the navy ; then married, resigned 
his commission, and went back to New York to take care of 
his estates, living part of the time at the old home on Otsego 
Lake and part of the time near his wife's parents in West- 
chester County. 

He had now reached the age of thirty and had never 
thought of writing stories. One day, at about this time, he 
was reading to Mrs. Cooper a new novel that had just come 
over from England. It did not please him. "I believe I 
could write a better story myself," he said, as he threw down 
the book. 

"Why don't you try?" asked his wife. 

It gave him a new thought. He did try. His first story 
was a novel of English life, and was very crude, but it taught 
him something, and he discovered that if a story writer would 
be successful he must write of things that he knows. 

His second story was about just such things. The scene 
of it was laid in Westchester County, where he was then 
living, and the time was the Revolution, which was not yet so 
far distant that he could not find many men who had been 
through it and who could point out places and describe events. 
The hero of his tale was a spy named Harvey Birch, who, 
disguised as a peddler, passed through the British lines and 
obtained information that was of great service to the American 
army. Birch was a picture of a real character who, under 
another name, was well known in Westchester County dur- 
ing the Revolution. The book was called "The Spy." It 



342 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

was widely read both in England and America, and made its 
author's reputation. 

For his next novel Cooper went back to the Indians and 
trappers and the great forest that he had known so well in his 
boyhood about Otsego Lake. This story was "The Pioneers." 
It was even more successful than "The Spy." 

But there was still another kind of life that Cooper knew, 
and he determined to write a story about it. It was the life 
of the sea. So he wrote "The Pilot," which tells of cruising 
and fighting on board a man-of-war. 

From that time on, Cooper devoted his life to the writing 
of fiction. He lived for a time in New York City, where he 
founded a club called the "Bread and Cheese Lunch," among 
the members of which were Bryant, Fitz-Greene Halleck, 
Morse the inventor, and other well-known men. Then he 
went to Europe and remained there seven years, honored 
everywhere as the "great American novelist" or the "Amer- 
ican Scott." 

When he returned, he wrote several books in which he 
tried to show Americans some of their faults. People are 
never fond of being criticized, and the result was that the 
newspapers turned about and began to criticize him. At 
this same time he wrote a "History of the United States 
Navy," in which he called things by their right names, and 
by doing so offended many. Instead of overlooking the 
attacks of his critics — which would have been the more 
sensible plan — he attacked them in turn and even sued them 
in the courts. He won his cases, too, but in doing it he 
stirred up enough ill-feeling to make him unhappy for the 
remainder of his life. 

His last days were spent in the old home at Cooperstown, 
writing to the end. He wrote, in all, thirty-two stories. 
Aside from those already mentioned, the best are "The 
Deerslayer," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Pathfinder," 
"The Prairie," and "Red Rover." 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 343 

THE ESCAPE OF THE SPY 

[The following selection is from "The Spy." Captain Lawton, with 
a detachment of British dragoons, has been on an expedition and is on 
his way to rejoin the main body of the British troops when suddenly 
Harvey Birch, the "spy," is discovered in his peddler's disguise.] 

The gathering mists of the evening had begun to darken 
the valley as the detachment of Lawton made its reappearance. 
The march of the troops was slow, and their line extended, for 
the benefit of ease. In the front rode the captain, side by side 
with his senior subaltern, apparently engaged in close confer- 5 
ence. . . . 

Suddenly the captain exclaimed, "What animal is moving 
through the field on our right?" 

" 'Tis a man," said Mason, looking intently at the suspicious 
object. IO 

"By his hump 'tis a dromedary!" added the captain, 
eying it keenly. Wheeling his horse suddenly from the 
highway, he exclaimed, "Harvey Birch! take him, dead or 
alive!" 

Only Mason and a few of the leading dragoons understood 15 
the sudden cry, but it was heard throughout the line. A 
dozen of the men, with their lieutenant at their head, followed 
the impetuous Lawton, and their speed threatened the pursued 
with a sudden termination of the race. . . . 

For a single instant Birch was helpless, his blood curdling 20 
in his veins at the imminence of the danger, and his legs 
refusing their natural and necessary office. But it was only 
for a moment. Casting his pack where he stood and in- 
stinctively tightening the belt he wore, the peddler betook 
himself to flight. He knew that by bringing himself in a line 25 
with his pursuers and the wood, his form would be lost to 
sight. This he soon effected, and he was straining every 
nerve to gain the wood itself, when several horsemen rode by 



344 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

him but a short distance on his left and cut him off from this 
place of refuge. 

The peddler threw himself on the ground as they came 
near him, and was passed unseen. But delay now became 

5 too dangerous for him to remain in that position. He accord- 
ingly arose, and still keeping in the shadow of the wood, 
along the skirts of which he heard voices crying to each other 
to be watchful, he ran with incredible speed in a parallel line, 
but in an opposite direction, to the march of the dragoons. 

10 The confusion of the chase had been heard by the whole 
of the men, though none distinctly understood the order of 
Lawton but those who followed. The remainder were lost 
in doubt as to the duty that was required of them, when a 
man at a short distance in the rear crossed the road at a single 

15 bound. At the same instant the stentorian voice of Lawton 
rang through the valley, shouting, "Harvey Birch ! take him, 
dead or alive !'" 

Fifty pistols lighted the scene, and the bullets whistled 
in every direction round the head of the devoted peddler. A 

20 feeling of despair seized his heart, and he was about to 
yield himself to his enemies. Nature, however, prevailed. If 
taken, there was great reason to apprehend that he would not 
be honored with the forms of a trial, but that most probably the 
morning sun would witness his ignominious execution. . . . 

25 These considerations, with the approaching footsteps of 
his pursuers, roused him to new exertions. He again fled. 
A fragment of a wall fortunately crossed his path. He hardly 
had time to throw his exhausted limbs over this barrier, 
before twenty of his enemies reached its opposite side. 

30 Their horses refused to take the leap in the dark, and amid 

the confusion of the rearing chargers and the execrations of 

their riders, Birch was enabled to gain a sight of the base of 

the hill, on whose summit was a place of perfect security. 

The heart of the peddler now beat high with hope, when the 

35 voice of Captain Lawton again rang in his ears, shouting to 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 345 

his men to make room. The order was obeyed, and the fear- 
less trooper rode at the wall at the top of his horse's speed, 
plunged the rowels in his charger, and flew over the obstacle 
in safety. The triumphant hurrahs of the men and the 
thundering tread of the horse too plainly assured the peddler 5 
of the emergency of his danger. 

"Stop, or die!" was uttered above his head and in fearful 
proximity to his ears. 

Harvey stole a glance over his shoulder and saw within a 
bound of him the man whom he most dreaded. By the 10 
light of the stars he beheld the uplifted arm and the threatening 
saber. Then the horse of Law ton struck the prostrate peddler, 
and both steed and rider came violently to the earth. 

As quick as thought Birch was on his feet again with the 
sword of the discomfited dragoon in his hand. Vengeance 15 
seems but too natural to human passions. There are few 
who have not felt the seductive pleasure of making our injuries 
recoil on their authors ; and yet there are some who know how 
much sweeter it is to return good for evil. All the wrongs of 
the peddler shone on his brain with a dazzling brightness. 20 
For a moment the demon within him prevailed, and Birch 
brandished the powerful weapon in the air; in the next, it 
fell harmless on the reviving but helpless trooper. The 
peddler vanished up the side of the friendly rock. 

"Help Captain Lawton, there!" cried Mason, as he rode 25 
up, followed by a dozen of his men; "and some of you dis- 
mount with me and search these rocks." 

"Hold! " roared the discomfited captain, raising himself with 
difficulty on his feet ; "if one of you dismount, he dies. Tom, 
my good fellow, you will help me to straddle Roanoke again." 30 

The astonished subaltern complied in silence, while the 
wondering dragoons remained as fixed in their saddles as if they 
composed part of the animals they rode. 

"You are much hurt, I fear," said Mason, with something 
of condolence, as they reentered the highway. 35 



346 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

" Something so, I do believe," replied the captain, catching 
his breath; "I wish our bonesetter was at hand to examine 
into the state of my ribs." . . . 

" Captain Lawton," said the orderly, riding to the side of 
5 his commanding officer, "we are now passing the house of the 
peddler spy; is it your pleasure that we burn it?" 

"No !" roared the captain, in a voice that startled the dis- 
appointed sergeant. "Are you an incendiary? Would you 
10 burn a house in cold blood ? Let but a spark approach, and 
the hand that carries it will never light another." 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of Cooper's life. 2. From what book is this story 
taken, and when and where are the events supposed to have occurred ? 
3. Who was Harvey Birch? 4. Explain "their line extended, for the 
benefit of ease." 5. Define "subaltern," "dragoon." 6. Explain " by his 
hump 'tis a dromedary." 7. Why did Birch try to get between his pur- 
suers and the wood? 8. Define and give the origin of "stentorian." 
9. Was it natural for Birch to spare Captain Lawton's life ? How do 
you account for it ? What was the result ? 

Perhaps the best of Cooper's books for reading through are "The 
Deerslayer" and "The Last of the Mohicans." 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

1794-1878 

Bryant was the poet of nature — of woods and wild flowers 
and running brooks and singing birds. He loved to be out of 
doors, to feel the wind in his face, to hear the song of the 
bobolink, and to wander alone in the forest. He was the oldest 
of our great American poets and was born in a log farmhouse in 
Cummington, up among the mountains of western Massachu- 
setts, in 1794, when the United States had but just begun as a 
nation and when Washington was president. 

Bryant's father was a doctor and taught the boy a great deal 
about flowers and plants and something about music and 
poetry. His mother was a strong and good woman who spun 
the yarn, wove the cloth, and made the clothes for all the 
family, besides making the carpets, the candles, the soap, and 
most of the other things that were needed about the house. 
She also taught the children to read and write and to hate 
everything that was mean and low. When young Cullen 
was four years old he began to go to school, and when he was 
eight he commenced writing verse. It was not remarkably 
good verse, to be sure, but he kept writing because he liked 
the rime and the measured beat of the lines, and before many 
years he was writing real poetry. 

Near the schoolhouse was a brook, where he used to pick 
wild flowers. Years afterward he went back and sat beside 
it and wrote his poem "The Rivulet," describing his feelings 
when he played there as a boy. 

When woods in early green were dressed, 
And from the chambers of the west 
347 



348 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

The warmer breezes, traveling out, 
Breathed the new scent of flowers about, 
My truant steps from home would stray, 
Upon its grassy side to play, 
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn, 
And crop the violet on its brim, 
With blooming cheek and open brow, 
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou. 

At thirteen he had one of his poems printed and sold a 
number of copies. This was better than his first poem and was 
rather remarkable for a boy of his age. 

When Bryant had acquired all the learning that could be 
had at the district school, — working on the farm outside of 
school hours, and doing his reading at night before the open 
fire, — he began to prepare for college. In this he was assisted 
by a neighboring clergyman at whose house he boarded for 
one dollar a week, with instruction thrown in. At sixteen he 
took an examination for entrance into Williams College, — 
which was not far distant from his home, — and so well did 
he do his work that he was able to enter college as a sophomore. 
He remained at William^ only two terms, and hoped then to 
enter Yale ; but the farm had not yielded much that year 
and his father could not find the money for his college 
expenses. 

This was a sad time for Bryant. It seemed like the giving 
up of all his hopes. His despondency was increased by ill — 
health, and while this spell was upon him it is supposed that 
he wrote the poem " Thanatopsis " which means "A looking 
upon death." It is not a cheerful poem, but it has a grand, 
majestic sweep that entitles it to a place among the great 
poems of America. No real poetry had then been written on 
this side of the Atlantic ; and literary men could not believe 
that there was any one in America who could write it — least 
of all a boy of eighteen. ''Thanatopsis" was not published 
until several years after it had been written. 



350 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Under all these discouragements the young poet fought his 
way. He at length decided that if he could not continue at 
college he would study law. So he went into the office of a 
country lawyer in Cummington, and there worked hard and 
earnestly. When he had passed his examinations and was 
admitted to practice in the courts, he opened a little office 
of his own in Plainfield and after a year of struggle, went 
to Great Barrington, where he was somewhat more successful 
and where he practiced nine years. During this time he met 
and married Mrs. Bryant. 

But he did not like the law, and often when his day's work 
at the desk, or in the court, was done, he would go out into 
the woods and fields, alone, and there would put into verse 
the thoughts that came to him. Some of these early nature 
poems were published in the North American Review. Later 
he collected and published them in a small volume. 

During all this time he kept feeling that his life should be 
that of a writer, and the feeling grew upon him until at thirty- 
one he definitely gave up his law practice, went to New York, 
and devoted himself to writing. He was, first, the editor of 
the shortlived New York Review; then he went to work for 
the New York Evening Post, and within three years was made 
its editor-in-chief. 

He held this position for the remainder of his long life, — a 
period of more than fifty years, — and made his paper one 
of the strongest and most influential in the country. He also 
became a leader in political as well as literary affairs ; but 
throughout his entire life he loved to escape, when he could, 
from the rush of his daily work and refresh himself with the 
reading and writing of poetry. His last important work was 
the translation of Homer's " Iliad" and " Odyssey" into blank 
verse. This was done after he was seventy years of age. 

Bryant's poetry is for the most part quiet and thoughtful. 
Nature seemed not only to show him beautiful pictures but 
to inspire him to live more nobly. He called her his teacher. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 351 

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN 1 

[Along the roadsides and in the meadows, during the late autumn, 
the blue gentian holds out its delicately fringed cup to catch the last 
warm sunshine of the year. It is a flower that Bryant loved, and he 
here tells us of his feeling toward it. It does not come with the violets 
nor the columbines. But when all other flowers are gone, and the woods 
are bare, and the birds have flown, and the frost is on the grass, this little 
flower looks up through its fringes, as blue as the sky itself.] 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night, 

Thou comest not when violets lean 5 

O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 
Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 

When woods are bare and birds are flown, 10 

And frosts and shortening days portend 

The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 

Look through its fringes to the sky, 

Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 15 

A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 

The hour of death draw near to me, 

Hope, blossoming within my heart, 

May look to heaven as I depart. 20 

1 Copyright. D. Appleton and Company. 



352 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Tell briefly what you know of Bryant — his boyhood, education, 
and later life. 2. Where and when does the fringed gentian bloom? 
If possible, have one before you as you read the poem. 3. At what 
time of the day does the gentian open? How does the poet express 
this? 4. Explain "the aged year." What shows that the end of the 
year is near? 5. Notice that " quiet" is used a second time in line 13, 
page 351, as if the poet wished to strengthen the feeling of quietness and 
peace which pervades the entire poem. 6. What is the " cerulean wall " 
mentioned in line 16? Define "cerulean." 7. In the last stanza what 
"hope" does the poet have when he thinks of death? 8. Memorize 
the poem. 

Other autumn poems: Bryant's "The Death of the Flowers," Long- 
fellow's "The Rainy Day," Frank Dempster Sherman's "Goldenrod," 
George Arnold's "September" and "September Days," Dinah Mulock 
Craik's "October," Cowper's "The Cricket," Wordsworth's "Nutting," 
Jones Very's "October," and "The Latter Rain," Cooper's "Bob 
White," Thomas Moore's "The Last Rose of Summer," Tabb's "Indian 
Summer," John H. Bryant's "Indian Summer," Whittier's "Indian Sum- 
mer," "The Huskers," and the "Corn Song," Riley's "When the Frost 
is on the Punkin," Alice Cary's "November," and "Faded Leaves," 
R. H. Stoddard's "November," E. C. Stedman's "Autumn Song," 
"The Little Leaves," and "The Flight of the Birds." 



TO A WATERFOWL 

[This beautiful poem was composed during a walk from Cummington 
to Plainfield, Massachusetts, in the early winter of 1815. Bryant had 
been disappointed in finishing his college course, had read law, instead, 
and now was going to Plainfield to begin his work as a lawyer. But he 
was uncertain of himself ; he did not know whether he wanted to be a 
lawyer after all ; he thought he would rather write, if the way were open. 
He was uncertain also of his health. The world looked big and hard, 
and he felt lonely and ill prepared to face it. As he walked, twilight 
settled upon the earth, and looking up he saw a wild duck that had been 
separated from its fellows and was winging its way through the sky. 
It seemed like himself, alone, wandering from home through a limitless 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 353 

expanse ! But an unseen Power was guiding it, and he felt that there 
were in store for it days of joy and comradeship.] 

Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 5 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10 

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
The desert and illimitable air — 15 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 20 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 25 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 



354 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

He who from zone to zone 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Explain the circumstances under which this poem was written and 
the similarity between the bird and the poet. 2. In the first stanza, 
what phrases tell the time of day? 3. Explain the figure in "last steps 
of day." 4. Why could the fowler do the bird no harm? 5. Note the 
fine figure, "As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, thy figure floats 
along." What does this suggest? 6. Explain "plashy brink" (note 
the harmony between the sound and meaning in plashy), "chafed ocean 
side," "pathless coast," "desert and illimitable air." 7. What is the 
difference between wandering and being lost ? 

8. Why is the atmosphere called thin? 9. Note the sharp contrast 
between the fifth and sixth stanzas. Explain "the abyss of heaven." 
10. What is the figure in "swallowed up"? How else might this sen- 
tence be expressed? Can you find any other expression so strong or 
satisfactory? 11. What is "the lesson thou hast given"? 12. Ex- 
plain "certain flight." 13. How was Bryant's faith in God justified 
in his own life? 14. Point out examples of alliteration in this poem. 
15. Name the figures of speech. 16. Select passages that you like best. 
17. Memorize the poem. 

Other readings from Bryant: "Thanatopsis," "Sella," "The Eve- 
ning Wind," "Hymn to the North Star." 

Read also Celia Thaxter's "The Sandpiper" and Whittier's "The 
Eternal Goodness." 



EDWARD EVERETT 

1794-1865 

When Daniel Webster was studying law in Boston, he once 
helped his brother Ezekiel for a short time in the teaching of 
a private school. Among the pupils was a boy named Edward 
Everett, the son of a Dorchester clergyman ; this boy became 
in later years an orator scarcely less distinguished than 
Webster himself, and was one of Webster's warmest personal 
friends. 

Young Everett's father had recently died and the boy 
was working hard to obtain an education. He fitted for 
college at Phillips Exeter Academy, entered Harvard at 
thirteen, the youngest member of his class, and graduated 
four years later with the highest honors. Thinking to follow 
his father's profession, he then studied theology and in 18 13 
became pastor of the Brattle Street Church, where his elo- 
quence and charm of manner attracted large congregations. 
After a two years' pastorate he was offered the professorship of 
Greek literature at Harvard and was allowed four years of 
foreign travel and study to prepare himself. This position he 
accepted, and while at Harvard lived for a time in the old 
Craigie house, later famed as the home of Longfellow. During 
his professorship he was also editor of the North American 
Review. 

Everett was already known as a brilliant orator, and in 
1824 was elected to Congress, where he served ten years. 
Then he was made governor of Massachusetts and three 
times reelected, losing his fourth reelection by a single vote. 
President William H. Harrison next appointed him ambassador 

355 



356 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

to England, and upon the conclusion of his term of office he 
returned to this country and was made president of Harvard 
University. 

At the death of Webster in 1852 Everett succeeded him as 
Secretary of State, and upon retiring from that position entered 
the Senate. He was one of the Republican electors in 1864, 
and his last political act was to cast his electoral vote for 
Lincoln's reelection. 

Everett did not have the natural gifts of Webster or Clay 
or Calhoun, but what he lacked in force he made up in scholar- 
ship, judgment, and good taste. He was the highest type of a 
cultured gentleman of the old school ; and his fine face, his 
noble figure, his full, clear voice, were well fitted to the 
graceful style of oratory in which he excelled. 

DAWN 

[Upon the opening of the Dudley Observatory, at Albany, August 28, 
1856, Everett gave an address on the Uses of Astronomy, containing 
this fine description of dawn. Notice that he is describing something 
so beautiful as to be worth going miles to see, yet so common that we 
can see it almost any morning.] 

I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train 
from Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose rose at two 
o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in 
darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed 

5 at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It 
was a mild, serene, midsummer's night, — the sky was with- 
out a cloud, — the winds were whist. The moon, then in the 
last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral 
luster but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours 

o high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the 
horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east ; Lyra sparkled 
near the zenith ; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered 
glories from the naked eye in the south ; the steady pointers, 



EDWARD EVERETT 357 

far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the 
north to their sovereign. 

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. 
As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became 
more perceptible ; the intense blue of the sky began to soften ; 5 
the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest ; the 
sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the 
bright constellations of the west and north remained un- 
changed. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. 
Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery 10 
of the heavens ; the glories of night dissolved into the glories 
of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; 
the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ; the east began 
to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the 
sky ; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing 15 
tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from 
above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we 
reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from 
above the horizon and turned the dewy teardrops of flower and 
leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds the ever- 20 
lasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the 
lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, 
began his state. 

I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, 
who in the morning of the world went up to the hilltops of 25 
Central Asia and ignorant of the true God, adored the most 
glorious work of his hand. But I am filled with amazement 
when I am told that in this enlightened age and in the heart 
of the Christian world there are persons who can witness this 
daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator 30 
and yet say in their hearts, "There is no God." 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of the life of the author of this address. 2. Where 
and when was the address delivered ? Notice that the description is 



358 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

not of a fixed scene, but of one which is constantly changing. First 
the cloudless summer night, with the moon and planets moving through 
the sky; then the approach of twilight, the fading of the stars, faint 
streaks of color in the east, a gradual lightening of the heavens, until 
at length the sun bursts above the horizon and makes the dewdrops 
glisten like jewels. If you think these colors unnatural, watch the 
sunrise for a few mornings and see how many more you will discover. 

3. Does the clank of the train add to the effect or detract from it? 
Why? 4. Explain a the winds were whist," "the moon . . . in the 
last quarter" "spectral luster," "Jupiter," "herald of the day." 5. What 
are the Pleiades, and what allusion is there in "shed their sweet influence " 
(see Job 38:31)? 6. What is Lyra? Andromeda? Explain "veiled 
her newly discovered glories from the naked eye." (W T ith a telescope 
new stars had recently been discovered in this constellation. What is a 
constellation ?) 

7. What are "the steady pointers," and who is "their sovereign"? 
8. What is the force of "timid" in line 4, page 357? What figure in 
"like little children," etc.? 9. Explain "the sister-beams of the Pleiades 
melted together." 10. What figure in "hands of angels," etc.? in 
"shut up their holy eyes"? in "blushed"? 11. Study the phrases 
and explain when necessary: "celestial concave," "inflowing tides," 
"ocean of radiance," "flash of purple fire," "dewy teardrops," "gates 
of the morning," "lord of day," "began his state." 

12. Who were the ancient Magians, and what is meant by "the 
morning of the world"? What did the Magians worship? 13. Why 
did not the speaker wonder at their superstition? 14. What thought 
did the glory and beauty of the dawn bring to Everett? 

Other readings from Everett : extracts from the orations on Bunker 
Hill (1850), the Death of Webster (1852), the Character of Washington 
(1856), The Battle of Bloody Brook, — King Philip (1835). 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

1796-1859 

Every reader of American history knows of Colonel Prescott, 
who commanded the minutemen at Bunker Hill, but not every 
reader knows that he was the grandfather of Prescott the 
historian. The son of Colonel Prescott, and father of the 
historian, was also a distinguished man in his day — a lawyer 
of Salem and of Boston, and in later life a judge. So when 
his son William Hickling Prescott came into the world, he had 
an ancestry that laid upon him some responsibility for keeping 
up the family reputation. 

William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem in the spring 
of 1796. He was a bright, handsome child ; his parents were 
wealthy and devoted to him ; he had the advantages of a 
cultured home and of the best teachers that could be obtained. 
At fifteen he entered Harvard and at once became exceedingly 
popular. He was active, manly, full of fun, and there was a 
kindliness and cheer about him that made every one his friend. 
During his junior year, however, an accident occurred which 
if he had been made of weaker stuff, would have wrecked his 
life. One night at dinner in the college commons a boisterous 
student hurled a hard piece of bread across the table, striking 
young Prescott in the open eye, destroying the sight of it, and 
giving him such a shock that he was ill for weeks. When 
he recovered he went cheerfully on with his work, making the 
most of the eye that remained, though his physician warned 
him to be very careful of it or he would lose the sight of that 
too. He graduated the next year and began the study of law 
in his father's office in Boston, but his right eye — the good 

359 



360 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

one — began to trouble him, and he soon found himself 
totally blind. By living in a darkened room he recovered in a 
measure the use of the right eye, and as it became stronger he 
was sent to the Azores to visit his mother's family — for his 
grandfather Hickling was then consul at that place. It was 
hoped that the change and out-of-door life would improve his 
general health and thus help his eyesight. He enjoyed a few 
days of his new life in the Azores ; then found himself again 
in darkness. But he kept his courage, sang songs, joked with 
his cousins, and took daily exercise by walking back and forth 
in a darkened room, thrusting out his arms to keep from 
running into the walls. Then he went to London to consult a 
specialist and was told that with care he might use his eye a 
little every day. 

After traveling over the Continent and visiting Paris, 
Florence, and Rome, he returned home and continued his 
studies. This was made possible through the help of his 
sister, who read to him nearly eight hours each day. He 
went out into society and made himself welcome everywhere 
by his unfailing gayety, wit, and good-nature. At twenty- 
four he married and determined to devote his life to literature. 
He had no thought of giving up. To perfect his style he 
spent six years in listening six to eight hours a day to readings 
from the best English writers and in making himself more 
thoroughly familiar with Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish 
literature, read to him in the original tongues. He trained 
himself to remember the important points in what was read 
to him, and with bandaged eyes made notes in pencil, guiding 
his hand along the lines by means of a series of fine wires. 

At thirty he decided to write a history of the reign of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella. He sent to Spain for books treating of 
those times. Rare books and manuscripts that he could not 
buy or borrow he had copied for him in parts, by hand. After 
collecting several hundred volumes bearing upon his subject 
he hired a secretary who could read Spanish, and began his 



362 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

preparation. Three and a half years were spent in the reading 
and study of these sources of information, before he began to 
write. Then, as he wrote, he found that he must investigate 
still other sources. With infinite patience, slighting nothing, 
hurrying over nothing, he continued his task, and in ten 
years from the time that he began to read for " Ferdinand 
and Isabella" the book was ready for publication. It was 
immediately successful. 

He next began work upon the " Conquest of Mexico," 
which took five years of the same sort of labor. Then followed 
the "Conquest of Peru," which consumed three years more. 
Each day the author took a horseback ride at sunrise, devoted 
an average of seven hours to his reading and writing, walked 
several miles, and by his physician's advice was allowed the 
use of his eye about thirty-five minutes, scarcely more than five 
minutes at a time. His last important work was "Philip 
the Second," of which three volumes were published, but 
which was not finished at the time of his death, in 1859. 

On the wall of Prescott's library, over his books, were two 
crossed swords. One was that of his grandfather, Colonel 
Prescott ; the other, that of Captain Linsee, Mrs. Prescott's 
grandfather, who was captain of the British sloop-of-war 
Falcon, and who, strangely enough, on that seventeenth of 
June, 1775, was eagerly engaged in bombarding Colonel 
Prescott and his minutemen on Bunker Hill. These swords 
represent a certain kind of bravery which it is good to have, 
but Prescott the historian had a different and a higher kind. 
He was all his life fighting to do a worthy work, under a great 
handicap, and he did it with a cheerfulness and confidence 
which are a lesson to all men. 

THE DISCOVERY OF PERU 

[In 1524 Pizarro, then at Panama, began to be attracted by stories 
of a great and wealthy native empire to the south. With the aid of 
two friends and the consent of the governor, he set out to find it, but his 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 363 

first expedition was a failure. Two years later he tried again, sailing 
down the Pacific coast and exploring the country along the shore. After 
great hardships he landed on the island of Gallo and sent back his 
companion, Almagro, for more men. The undertaking seemed so hope- 
less that instead of sending men the Spanish governor of Panama sent 
an officer to bring back Pizarro and his companions. Pizarro would 
not come. With his sword he drew a line in the sand and said, "On that 
side lie toil, hunger, thirst, sickness, and every kind of danger, but also 
the chance of glory and heroic achievement." Then he stepped over 
the line. Thirteen of his companions also stepped over it, indicating 
that they would follow him; the rest went back. But Almagro had 
obtained another ship at Panama and came to Pizarro's assistance. 
Together they sailed as far south as the Gulf of Guayaquil. At that 
point they took several natives, together with evidences of the country's 
wealth, and returned to Panama, whence Pizarro went to Spain and told 
his story to King Charles the Fifth. The king authorized him to return 
and conquer the country, making him governor of it, in the name of 
Spain. With this authority Pizarro raised an army, returned to Panama, 
and in 1531 set sail again for Peru. This selection is from the "Con- 
quest of Peru."] 

At length the adventurous vessel rounded the point of St. 
Helena and glided smoothly into the waters of the beautiful 
gulf of Guayaquil. The country was here studded along the 
shore with towns and villages, though the mighty chain of 
the Cordilleras, sweeping up abruptly from the coast, lefts 
but a narrow strip of emerald verdure, through which 
numerous rivulets, spreading fertility around them, wound 
their way into the sea. 

The voyagers were now abreast of some of the most 
stupendous heights of this magnificent range — Chimborazo, 10 
with its broad, round summit towering like the dome of the 
Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling cone of silvery white, 
that knows no change except from the action of its own 
volcanic fires — for this mountain is the most terrible of the 
American volcanoes and was in formidable activity at no 15 
great distance from the period of our narrative. Well pleased 



364 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

with the signs of civilization that opened on them at every 
league of their progress, the Spaniards at length came to 
anchor off the island of Santa Clara, lying at the entrance of 
the bay of Tumbez. 
5 As they drew near they beheld a town of considerable size, 
with many of the buildings, apparently of stone and plaster, 
situated in the bosom of a fruitful meadow, which seemed to 
have been redeemed from the sterility of the surrounding 
country by careful and minute irrigation. When at some 
10 distance from shore, Pizarro saw standing towards him several 
large balsas, which were found to be filled with warriors going 
on an expedition against the island of Puna. Running along- 
side of the Indian flotilla, he invited some of the chiefs to come 
on board of his vessel. The Peruvians gazed with wonder on 
15 every object which met their eyes, and especially on their own 
countrymen, whom they had little expected to meet there. 
The latter informed them in what manner they had fallen 
into the hands of the strangers, whom they described as a 
wonderful race of beings, that had come thither for no harm 
20 but solely to be made acquainted with the country and its 
inhabitants. 

The people of Tumbez were gathered along the shore and 
were gazing with unutterable amazement on the^ floating 
castle, which now having dropped anchor, rode lazily at its 
25 moorings in their bay. They eagerly listened to the accounts 
of their countrymen and instantly reported the affair to the 
curaca or ruler of the district, who, conceiving that the 
strangers must be beings of a superior order, prepared at 
once to comply with their request. It was not long before 
30 several balsas were seen steering for the vessel, laden with 
bananas, plantains, yuca, Indian corn, sweet potatoes, pine- 
apples, coconuts, and other rich products of the bountiful 
vale of Tumbez. Game and fish, also, were added, with a 
number of llamas, of which Pizarro had seen the rude drawings 
ss belonging to Balboa, but of which till now he had met with no 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 365 

living specimen. He examined this curious animal, the Peru- 
vian sheep — or, as the Spaniards called it, the "little camel" 
of the Indians — with much interest, greatly admiring the 
mixture of wool and hair which supplied the natives with the 
materials for their fabrics. 5 

On the day following, the Spanish captain sent one of his 
own men, named Alonso de Molina, on shore, accompanied 
by a negro who had come in the vessel from Panama, together 
with a present for the curaca of some swine and poultry, neither 
of which were indigenous to the New World. Towards 10 
evening his emissary returned with a fresh supply of fruits 
and vegetables, that the friendly people sent to the vessel. 
Molina had a wondrous tale to tell. On landing he was 
surrounded by the natives, who expressed the greatest 
astonishment at his dress, his fair complexion, and his long 15 
beard. Their surprise was equally great at the complexion of 
his sable companion. They could not believe it was natural, 
and tried to rub off the imaginary dye with their hands. As 
the African bore all this with characteristic good-humor, 
displaying at the same time his rows of ivory teeth, they were 20 
prodigiously delighted. The animals were no less above their 
comprehension; and when the cock crew, the simple people 
clapped their hands and inquired what he was saying. 

Molina was then escorted to the residence of the curaca, 
whom he found living in much state, with porters stationed at 25 
his doors and with a quantity of gold and silver vessels, from 
which he was served. He was then taken to different parts 
of the Indian city, saw a fortress built of rough stone and 
though low, spreading over a large extent of ground. Near 
this was a temple ; and the Spaniard's description of its deco- 30 
rations, blazing with gold and silver, seemed so extravagant 
that Pizarro, distrusting his whole account, resolved to send 
a more discreet and trustworthy emissary on the following day. 

The person selected was Pedro de Candia, the Greek cavalier 
mentioned as one of the first who intimated his intention to 35 



366 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

share the fortunes of his commander. He was sent on shore 
dressed in complete mail, as became a good knight, with his 
sword by his side and his arquebus on his shoulder. The 
Indians were even more dazzled by his appearance than by 

5 Molina's, as the sun fell brightly on his polished armor and 
glanced from his military weapons. They had heard much 
of the formidable arquebus from their townsmen who had 
come in the vessel, and they besought Candia ' ' to let it speak 
to them." He accordingly set up a wooden board as a target, 

ioand taking deliberate aim, fired off the musket. The flash 
of the powder and the startling report of the piece, as the 
board, struck by the ball, was shivered into splinters, rilled 
the natives with dismay. Some fell on the ground, covering 
their faces with their hands. 

15 They then showed him the same hospitable attentions which 
they had paid to Molina ; and his description of the marvels 
of the place, on his return, fell nothing short of his prede- 
cessor's. The fortress, which was surrounded by a triple row 
of wall, was strongly garrisoned. The temple he described 

20 as literally tapestried with plates of gold and silver. Adjoin- 
ing this structure was a sort of convent appropriated to the 
Inca's destined brides, who manifested great curiosity to see 
him. Whether this was gratified is not clear; but Candia 
described the gardens of the convent, which he entered, as 

25 glowing with imitations of fruits and vegetables all in pure gold 
and silver ! The town was well supplied with water by numer- 
ous aqueducts, and the fruitful valley in which it was em- 
bosomed, and the ocean which bathed its shores, supplied 
ample means of subsistence to a considerable population. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Prescott's life. 2. Tell of Pizarro's former efforts 
to explore Peru. 3. Locate on a map the Gulf of Guayaquil, Chimbo- 
razo, Cotopaxi, Puna (Tumbez was on the coast almost directly south of 
Puna). 4. Define "Cordilleras," " balsa," "curaca," "yuca," "llama." 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 367 

5. What impression do you gain of Peru from the opening description? 

6. How did the countrymen of the Peruvians, line 16, page 364, happen 
to be with Pizarro? 7. What truth was there in their statement that 
the Spaniards came to do no harm? 8. Define "indigenous," "sable," 
"prodigiously," "emissary," "arquebus," "Inca," "aqueducts." 

9. From this description what do you think was the character of the 
Peruvians ? 10. What right had the Spaniards to conquer Peru ? 1 1 . Select 
the paragraphs that are chiefly descriptive and those that are chiefly 
narrative. Which seem to you the stronger? 12. A historian's great 
strength is in making his readers see a picture vividly and accurately. 
How well does Prescott do this in the present selection ? 

Other readings from Prescott : The Return of Columbus to Spain, 
in "Ferdinand and Isabella," The Entrance of Cortes into the City of 
Mexico, in the "Conquest of Mexico," Pizarro's Line in the Sand, and 
the Embassy to the Inca, from the "Conquest of Peru." 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

i 804-1 864 

On the Fourth of July in the year 1804 the old town of 
Salem, Massachusetts, was gay with flags and banners and 
noisy with the booming of cannon. Independence Day was 
being celebrated in the usual manner ; but Captain Hawthorne 
and his wife, in their old frame house on Union Street, felt 
that day like doing a little extra celebrating, for a boy had 
just been born to them. 

Captain Hawthorne was a sailor and commanded one of 
those merchant ships that used to go out from the wharves 
of Salem to all the great ports of the world in the days when 
Salem was a famous seaport and before the neighboring city 
of Boston had outgrown it and taken away its trade. 

This boy of Captain Hawthorne's was named Nathaniel, 
and for four uneventful years he lived with his sister and his 
gentle mother in the old house on Union Street, until one day 
news came that his father had been stricken with a fever, 
in a foreign port, and had died there, far from home. Another 
little sister came into the family the same year, and the mother 
and the three children all went to live with their grandfather 
Manning in a tall old gray house not far away. 

Nathaniel was a handsome boy, with large deep eyes and 
a thoughtful face. He loved to read, but he also loved all 
outdoor sports and was skilled in them. When he was four- 
teen the family went up into the woods of Maine, on the 
borders of Sebago Lake. Here Nathaniel spent his time 
tramping through the forest or skating by moonlight on the 

368 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 369 

lake, or building camp fires and sitting beside them till he 
fell asleep. He says that he did a great deal of reading mean- 
while, and that his favorite books were Shakespeare and 
"Pilgrim's Progress." 

After a year in the Maine woods he went back to Salem, 
where he studied for a time under a private teacher and entered 
Bowdoin College in the same class with Longfellow and with 
Franklin Pierce, who afterwards became president of the 
United States. 

After graduating from Bowdoin, in 1825, Hawthorne 
again returned to Salem and for more than twelve years lived 
with his mother and sister in the old house which his grand- 
father had left them. He passed his days shut up in his room, 
writing and reading. Most of the things he wrote did not 
please him ; so he burned them and began again. At dusk 
each evening he would go out and take a solitary walk, 
generally along the seashore. He once said that he doubted 
if during those years there were twenty people in Salem who 
were aware of his existence. 

But after a time some of his stories found their way into 
the magazines, and with the help of a college friend they were 
collected and published in a book called "Twice-Told Tales." 
Longfellow was at that time writing for the North American 
Review, and was one of the first to praise the book and to 
bring it into notice. 

Near the Hawthornes in Salem lived at that time the Pea- 
bodys, a family in which there were three young women 
daughters. Sophia, the youngest, was an artist. She had 
read Hawthorne's stories without knowing who their author 
was ; and she became so much interested in them that she 
made a sketch of one of the characters whom she especially 
liked. Not long after this the acquaintance between the 
Hawthornes and the Peabodys was renewed, — for it seems 
the families had known one another in the years before 
Captain Hawthorne's death, — and a little later it was 



370 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

announced that young Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Pea- 
body were to be married. 

Hawthorne now began to see that he must earn more than his 
magazine stories and his book were paying him; accordingly 
he found employment in the Boston customhouse where he 
weighed bales of cotton and barrels of sugar by day and wrote 
stories by night. It was during this time that he wrote his 
book of true stories from New England history, called " Grand- 
father's Chair." 

But change soon occurred in the government of the custom- 
house, and Hawthorne lost his position. He had heard that 
a company of educated people were starting a large farm near 
West Roxbury, where every one was to work with his hands a 
part of each day and have plenty of time for reading and 
study. All were to live together like one great family and 
share everything equally. It was called Brook Farm. This 
seemed to Hawthorne an admirable plan, and he at once 
joined the company, spending one season in plowing and cul- 
tivating, milking cows, hoeing potatoes, and doing all sorts of 
farm work. He enjoyed it and made a good farmer, but he 
found that if the farm was to be kept up there would be no time 
left to read or study ; for some of the company did not like 
to soil their hands with farm work, and others hardly knew 
a spade from a pitchfork. They were willing to let Haw- 
thorne and a few others do the farming while they did the 
reading, but that was a division of labor not altogether 
pleasing to the young man. Afterwards he wrote a book, 
"The Blithedale Romance," which told something of life at 
Brook Farm. 

In 1842 Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody were married and 
went to live at Concord, Massachusetts, in an old house not 
far from Concord Bridge, where, you will remember, one of the 
first fights of the American Revolution took place. This house 
had formerly been the home of the village minister and was 
known as the Old Manse. It had also been occupied by 



372 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Emerson. The Old Manse is still standing — a fine old- 
fashioned hip-roofed house at the end of a ong avenue of 
trees, almost buried in foliage. In it the Hawthornes spent 
four happy years. Their eldest child was born there, and 
there Hawthorne wrote another book of short stories, which 
he called "Mosses from an Old Manse." Emerson was a 
neighbor, and near by lived Thoreau and Dr. Alcott and his 
daughters, one of whom Louisa, is known to young people as 
the author of "Little Women" and "Little Men." 

The Hawthornes then went back to Salem ; for Hawthorne 
had been given charge of the Salem customhouse. In an 
unused storeroom of that building he found one day an old 
bundle of papers dating from colonial times, which greatly 
interested him, and out of the facts related in them he wrote 
"The Scarlet Letter." This,, more than any of his other 
books, made him known and honored as a novelist. 

Perhaps the happiest period of his life was the year he 
spent at Lenox, among the mountains of western Mas- 
sachusetts, with his wife and children. He lived out of doors, 
took the children on nutting excursions, made kites and boats 
for them, and told them stories. These stories were chiefly 
about the Greek myths; he published them afterwards in 
"The Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." In Lenox he 
also wrote "The House of the Seven Gables." 

His college classmate Pierce had now become president, 
and appointed Hawthorne consul or representative of the 
United States at Liverpool. After several years in Liverpool 
and several more spent in traveling through Europe, where he 
wrote "The Marble Faun," Hawthorne returned to Concord 
and settled in the old Alcott house, called The Wayside, which 
he had bought before he went to Europe. Li the spring of 
1864, his health began to fail. Thinking that a journey would 
benefit him, he set forth, but it was a hard experience. The 
friend with whom he was traveling died on the journey, and 
Hawthorne himself did not live to return. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 373 

THE GREAT STONE FACE 

[This story was included in the volume called "The Snow Image, and 
Other Twice-Told Tales," published in 185 1. The idea of the face was 
suggested by the so-called "Old Man of the Mountain" in Franconia 
Notch of the White Mountains.] 

One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother 
and her little boy sat at the door of their cottage, talking 
about the Great Stone Face. They had but to lift their 
eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen, though miles away, 
with the sunshine brightening all its features. 5 

And what was the Great Stone Face? 

Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains there 
was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand 
inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log huts, 
with the black forest all around them on the steep and difficult 10 
hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farmhouses 
and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces 
of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous 
villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down 
from its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been 15 
caught and tamed by human cunning and compelled to turn the 
machinery of cotton factories. The inhabitants of this valley, 
in short, were numerous and of many modes of life. But all 
of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity 
with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift 20 
of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more per- 
fectly than many of their neighbors. 

The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her 
mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular 
side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been 25 
thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper 
distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human 
countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, 



374 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was 
the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height ; the 
nose, with its long bridge ; and the vast lips, which, if they 
could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents 
5 from one end of the valley to the other. 

As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat 
at their cottage door, gazing at the Great Stone Face and 
talking about it. The child's name was Ernest. 

" Mother," said he, while the Titanic visage smiled on 

iohim, "I wish that it could speak, for it looks so very kindly 
that its voice must needs be pleasant. If I were to see a 
man with such a face, I should love him dearly." 

"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his 
mother, "we may see a man, some time or other, with exactly 

15 such a face as that." 

"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly 
inquired Ernest. "Pray tell me all about it ! " 

So his mother told him a story that her own mother had 
told to her, when she herself was younger than little Ernest. 

20 The purport was that at some future day a child should be 
born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest 
and noblest personage of his time and whose countenance 
in manhood should bear an exact resemblance to the Great 
Stone Face. 

25 Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. 
He spent his childhood in the log cottage where he was born, 
and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many 
things, assisting her much with his little hands and more with 
his loving heart. In this manner he grew up to be a mild, 

30 quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the 
fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than 
is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. 
Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the Great Stone 
Face became one to him. When the toil of the day was over, 

35 he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to imagine 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 375 

that those vast, features recognized him and gave him a smile 
of kindness and encouragement. 

About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley 
that the great man foretold from ages long ago, who was to 
bear a resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at 5 
last. It seems that many years before, a young man had 
migrated from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, 
where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as 
a shopkeeper. His name — but I could never learn whether it 
was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his 10 
habits and success in life — was Gathergold. Being shrewd 
and active and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable 
faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, 
he became an exceedingly rich merchant and owner of a 
whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the 15 
globe appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding 
heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation of this one 
man's wealth. 

And when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that 
it would have taken him a hundred years only to count his 20 
wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley and resolved 
to go back thither and end his days where he was born. With 
this purpose in view he sent a skillful architect to build him 
such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to 
live in. 25 

In due time the mansion was finished ; next came the up- 
holsterers, with magnificent furniture ; then a whole troop of 
black and white servants, the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, 
who, in his own majestic person, was expected to arrive at 
sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply 30 
stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the 
man of prophecy, after so many ages of delay was at length to 
be made manifest. 

While the boy was still gazing up the valley, the rum- 
bling of wheels was heard. ' A carriage drawn by four horses 35 



376 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

dashed round the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly 
out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of a little old 
man with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand ha 1 
transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, 

5 puckered about with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin 
lips, which he made still thinner by pressing them forcibly 
together. 

"The very image of the Great Stone Face!" shouted the 
people. "Sure enough, the old prophecy is true; and here 

iowe have the great man come, at last." 

But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness 
of that sordid visage and gazed up the valley, where, amid a 
gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could still 
distinguish those glorious features which had impressed them- 

15 selves into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did 
the benign lips seem to say ? 

"He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!" 

The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He 

had grown to be a young man now. He attracted little notice 

20 from the other inhabitants of the valley ; for they saw nothing 
remarkable in his way of life, save that, when the labor of the 
day was over, he still loved to go apart and gaze and meditate 
upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of the 
matter it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as 

25 Ernest was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected 
no duty for the sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew 
not that the Great Stone Face had become a teacher to him 
and that the sentiment which was expressed in it would en- 
large the young man's heart and fill it with wider and deeper 

.so sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence 
would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books 
and a better life than could be molded on the defaced example 
of other human lives. 

By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried ; 

35 and the oddest part of the matter was that his wealth, which 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 377 

was the body and spirit of his existence, had disappeared 
before his death, leaving nothing of him but a living skeleton, 
covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Thus, Mr. 
Gathergold being discredited and thrown into the shade, the 
man of prophecy was yet to come. 5 

It so happened that a native-born son of the valley many 
years before had enlisted as a soldier, and after a great deal 
of hard righting had now become an illustrious commander. 
Whatever he may be called in history he was known in camps 
and on the battlefield under the nickname of Old Blood- and- 10 
Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age 
and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, had 
lately signified a purpose of returning to his native valley, 
hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left it. 
His old neighbors and their grown-up children were resolved 15 
to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and 
a public dinner ; and all the more enthusiastically, it being 
affirmed that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face 
had actually appeared. 

On the day of the great festival Ernest with all the other 20 
people of the valley left their work and proceeded to the spot 
where the sylvan banquet was prepared. The tables were 
arranged in a cleared space of the woods shut in by the sur- 
rounding trees except where a vista opened eastward and 
afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Our friend 25 
Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes in hopes to get a glimpse 
of the celebrated guest ; but there was a mighty crowd about 
the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches and to 
catch any word that might fall from the general in reply ; 
and a volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, pricked 30 
ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly quiet 
person among the throng. 

"The general! the general!" was now the cry. "Hush! 
silence ! Old Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a 
speech." 35 



378 NINETEENTH CENTURY— AMERICAN 

Even so ; for, the cloth being removed, the general's 
health had been drunk amid shouts of applause, and he now 
stood upon his feet to thank the company. Ernest saw him. 
There he was, over the shoulders of the crowd, from the two 

5 glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward, beneath 
the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the 
banner drooping as if to shade his brow ! And there, too, 
visible in the same glance, through the vista of the forest, 
appeared the Great Stone Face. And was there, indeed, such 

10 a resemblance as the crowd had testified ? Alas, Ernest could 
not recognize it ! He beheld a war-worn and weather-beaten 
countenance, full of energy and expressive of an iron will ; 
but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, 
were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunders visage. 

i 5 "This is not the man of prophecy," sighed Ernest to him- 
self. "And must the world wait longer yet?" 

The mists had congregated about the distant mountain 
side, and there were seen the grand and awful features of the 
Great Stone Face, awful but benignant, as if a mighty angel 

20 were sitting among the hills and enrobing himself in a cloud- 
vesture of gold and purple. As he looked, Ernest could hardly 
believe but that a smile beamed over the whole visage, with a 
radiance still brightening, although without motion of the 
lips. 

25 "Fear not, Ernest," said his heart, even as if the Great 
Face were whispering him, — "fear not, Ernest; he will 
come." 

More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest 
still dwelt in his native valley and was now a man of middle 

30 age. By imperceptible degrees he had become known 
among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for his 
bread and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always 
been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so 
many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some 

35 great good to mankind, that it seemed as though he had been 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 379 

talking with the angels and had imbibed a portion of their 
wisdom unawares. It was visible in the calm and well- 
considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet stream of 
which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not 
a day passed by, that the world was not the better because 5 
this man, humble as he was, had lived. 

But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs 
in the newspapers affirming that the likeness of the Great 
Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain 
eminent statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and Old Blood- 10 
and-Thunder, was a native of the valley, but had left it in 
his early days and taken up the trades of law and politics. 
Instead of the rich man's wealth and the warrior's sword he 
had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both together. 
So wonderfully eloquent was he that whatever he might 15 
choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him ; 
wrong looked like right, and right like wrong ; for when it 
pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his 
mere breath and obscure the natural daylight with it. In good 
truth he was a wondrous man ; and when his tongue had 20 
acquired him all other imaginable success, it finally persuaded 
his countrymen to select him for the presidency. Before 
this time — indeed, as soon as he began to grow celebrated — ■ 
his admirers had found out the resemblance between him and 
the Great Stone Face ; and so much were they struck by it that 25 
throughout the country this distinguished gentleman was 
known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. 

While his friends were doing their best to make him 
president, Old Stony Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit 
to the valley where he was born. Of course he had no other 30 
object than to shake hands with his fellow citizens, and 
neither thought nor cared about any effect which his progress 
through the country might have upon the election. Magnifi- 
cent preparations were made to receive the illustrious states- 
man ; a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the 35 



380 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

boundary line of the state, and all the people left their busi- 
ness and gathered along the wayside to see him pass. 

"Here he is, now!" cried those who stood near Ernest. 
" There ! There ! Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old 
5 Man of the Mountain, and see if they are not as like as two 
twin brothers !" 

In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche 
drawn by four white horses; and in the barouche, with his 
massive head uncovered, sat the illustrious statesman, Old 

10 Stony Phiz himself. 

Now it must be owned that at his first glimpse of the 
countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche 
Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and 
the old familiar 'face upon the mountain side. The brow, 

15 with its massive depth and loftiness, and all the other fea- 
tures, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emu- 
lation of a more than heroic — of a Titanic model. But the 
sublimity and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine 
sympathy, that illuminated the mountain visage and ethe- 

20 realized its ponderous granite substance into spirit, might here 
be sought in vain. Something had been originally left out, 
or had departed. 

Ernest turned away, melancholy and almost despondent ; 
for this was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a 

25 man who might have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not 
willed to do so. Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, 
the music, and the barouche swept past him, with the vocif- 
erous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down and 
the Great Stone Face to be revealed again with the grandeur 

30 that it had worn for untold centuries. 

"Lo, here I am, Ernest!" the benign lips seemed to say. 
"I have waited longer than thou and am not yet weary. 
Fear not; the man will come." 

The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one 

35 another's heels. And now they began to bring white hairs 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 381 

and scatter them over the head of Ernest ; they made reverend 
wrinkles across his forehead and furrows in his cheeks. He 
was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown old : more 
than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his 
mind ; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time 5 
had graved and in which he had written legends of wisdom that 
had been tested by the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased 
to be obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had .come the fame 
which so many seek, and made him known in the great world. 

While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a 10 
bountiful Providence had granted a new poet to this earth. 
He, likewise, was a native of the valley, but had spent the 
greater part of his life at a distance from that romantic region, 
pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and din of cities. 
Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar 15 
to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear 
atmosphere of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face 
forgotten ; for the poet had celebrated it in an ode which was 
grand enough to have been uttered by its own majestic lips. 

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He 20 
read them after his customary toil, seated on the bench 
before his cottage door, where for such a length of time he had 
rilled his repose with thought by gazing at the Great Stone 
Face. And now, as he read stanzas that caused the soul to 
thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance 25 
beaming on him so benignantly. 

" majestic friend," he murmured, "is not this man worthy 
to resemble thee?" 

The Face seemed to smile, but answered not a word. 

Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far 3 o 
away, had not only heard of Ernest but had meditated much 
upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to 
meet this man whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand 
with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, 
therefore, he took passage by the railroad and in the decline 35 



382 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

of the afternoon alighted from the cars at no great distance 
from Ernest's cottage. With his carpetbag on his arm he 
inquired where Ernest dwelt and was resolved to be accepted 
as his guest. 
5 Approaching the door, he there found the good old man 
holding a volume in his hand, which alternately he read and 
then with a finger between the leaves looked lovingly at the 
Great Stone Face. 

"Good evening," said the poet. "Can you give a traveler 
10 a night's lodging?" 

"Willingly," answered Ernest. 

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and 

Ernest talked together. Often had the poet held intercourse 

with the wittiest and the wisest, but never before with a 

15 man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with 

such a natural freedom and who made great truths so familiar 

by his simple utterance of them. And Ernest, on the other 

hand, was moved and agitated by the living images which the 

poet flung out of his mind and which peopled all the air about 

20 the cottage door with shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. 

As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great 

Stone Face was bending forward to listen too. He gazed 

earnestly into the poet's glowing eyes. 

"Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?" he said. 
25 The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been 
reading. "You have read these poems," said he. "You 
know me then — for I wrote them." 

Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined 
the poet's features ; then turned towards the Great Stone 
30 Face; then back, with an uncertain aspect, to his guest. 
But his countenance fell ; he shook his head and sighed. 
"Wherefore are you sad?" inquired the poet. 
"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited 
the fulfillment of a prophecy ; and when I read these poems 
35 I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you." 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 383 

"You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smiling, "to 
find in me the likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you 
are disappointed, as formerly with Mr. Gathergold and Old 
Blood-and-Thunder and Old Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is 
my doom. You must add my name to the illustrious three and 5 
record another failure of your hopes. For — in shame and 
sadness do I speak it, Ernest — I am not worthy to be typified 
by yonder benign and majestic image." 

"And why?" asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 
"Are not those thoughts divine?" IO 

"They have a strain of the Divinity," replied the poet. 
"You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. 
But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded with my 
thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have been 
only dreams, because I have lived — and that, too, by my own 15 
choice — among poor and mean realities." 

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. 
So, likewise, were those of Ernest. 

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, 
Ernest was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring 20 
inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, 
still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the 
spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray 
precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by 
the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a 25 
tapestry for the naked rock by hanging their festoons from all 
its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set 
in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, 
spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for 
such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and 30 
genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended 
and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. 

Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in 
his heart and mind. His words had power, because they 
accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality 35 



384 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he 
had always lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher 
uttered ; they were the words of life, because a life of good 
deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and 
5 rich, had been dissolved into this precious draft. The poet, 
as he listened, felt that the being and character of Ernest were 
a nobler strain of poetry than he had ever written. His eyes 
glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable 
man and said within himself that never was there an aspect 
10 so worthy of a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thought- 
ful countenance, with the glory of white hair diffused about it. 
At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden 
light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with 
hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of 
15 Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace 
the world. 

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he 
was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of 
expression so imbued with benevolence that the poet, by an 
20 irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft, and shouted, — 

"Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the 
Great Stone Face !" 

Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep- 
sighted poet said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell something of Hawthorne's life. 2. Describe the Great Stone 
Face. This story covers the entire life of Ernest and may be divided 
into four parts. 

(a) Boyhood. The Coming of Gather gold. 3. Note that the story is 
poetic. Though not in verse form it is rhythmical. Find sentences 
that illustrate this. 4. Alliteration is sometimes used; find examples. 
5. The language is figurative. Explain the figures in "where some wild. 
highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace," etc. ; "It seemed 
as if . . . had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice." 6. In 
what way did Ernest spend his boyhood, and how did the Croat Stone 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 385 

Face become his teacher? 7. What does Gathergold's name tell of 
his character? In what other stories are the names descriptive (see 
"Pilgrim's Progress") ? 8. Note how the word "rumbling" conveys the 
sound of wheels. Find other words that have the sound of the things 
they represent. 9. Explain the figure in "Midas-hand." 10. Why did 
the people think that Gathergold looked like the Great Stone Face? 
Contrast the faces of the two. 

(b) Young Manhood. The Coming of Old Blood-and-Thunder. 
11. How did Ernest spend his young manhood, and what peculiarity 
did the people notice in him? 12. Explain "molded on the defaced 
example of other human lives." Define "discredited." 13. Explain 
"sylvan banquet," "vista." 14. What touch of humor in the descrip- 
tion of the banquet? 15. How did the general resemble the Face, and 
how did he fail? 16. Why was Ernest not deceived? 

(c) Middle Age. The Coming of Old Stony Phiz. 17. In what ways 
had Ernest changed ? 18. Explain the fine metaphor in line 4, page 379. 

19. Explain the figure in "he could make a kind of illuminated fog." 

20. Why did Old Stony Phiz return to the valley ? What shall we say 
of the sentence beginning "Of course," line 30, page 379? 21. Define 
"barouche," "emulation," "etherealized," "vociferous." 22. How did 
Old Stony Phiz resemble the Stone Face, and how did he fail? Why 
was Ernest's disappointment so much keener in this case ? 

(d) Old Age. The Coming of the Poet. 23. How had Ernest changed ? 
24. Note the figure "his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that 
Time had graved." Compare Ernest's wrinkles with those of Gather- 
gold. 25. Compare the poet and Ernest. Why did not the poet grow 
into the likeness of the Great Stone Face? 26. Explain "pearls, pure 
and rich," line 4, page 384; "the being and character of Ernest were 
a nobler strain of poetry," line 6. 27. Why could the poet see the like- 
ness between Ernest and the Great Stone Face, while the people of the 
valley had never noticed it? 28. Why did Ernest never think of being 
himself like the Face ? (Note that Ernest was unselfish. He worshiped 
the Great Stone Face without any thought that he was good enough to' 
be like it, but with the hope that some one else might be.) 29. What 
was Hawthorne's purpose in introducing the characters of Gathergold, 
Blood-and-Thunder, Stony Phiz, and the Poet ? 

Other readings from Hawthorne : Ben Franklin's Wharf and Samuel 
Johnson, from "Biographical Stories", The Pine Tree Shillings, The 
Sunken Treasure, and The Old-Fashioned School, from "Grandfather's 
Chair" ; "The Snow Image" ; and "A Rill from the Town Pump." 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

i 809-1 849 

One of the saddest literary lives that we shall read is that 
of Poe. He was a genius, and his name stands high among 
American writers, but his life was incomplete and clouded 
with sorrow, above which he was not strong enough to rise. 

His grandfather, General David Poe of Baltimore, fought 
in the Revolution; his father, also David by name, studied 
law, but being passionately fond of the stage, soon joined a 
company of players and married an actress. In January 
of the year 1809, while David Poe and his wife were play- 
ing in Boston, a boy was born to them. He was their 
second child, and they named him Edgar. The theatrical 
venture in which they had embarked proved a failure, and 
before the boy was four years old both the father and the 
mother had become ill and died in extreme poverty. Follow- 
ing this, the children, of whom there were then three, were 
adopted into different families. 

It was Edgar's lot to be taken by the wife of a Scotch 
tobacco merchant of Richmond, named Allan, and from 
his foster parents he received his middle name. When the 
boy was about six, the Allans went to England and placed 
him in a good school in the suburbs of London. He was a 
beautiful child and had his parents' talent for acting. It is 
said that when he was six, the Allans used to have him stand 
in a chair before guests and recite poetry. It seems evident 
that they did their best to spoil him ; at all events he grew 
up proud and willful. 

386 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 387 

At eleven he returned to Richmond with the Allans, con- 
tinued his education under private teachers, and at seventeen 
entered the University of Virginia. At the university he 
led a fast life, drinking and gambling until he found himself 
some twenty-five hundred dollars in debt. Mr. Allan re- 
fused to pay the debt, took him out of college, and put him 
to work in his counting house. But Poe, not relishing this 
dull life, had angry words with his foster father and left him. 

From Richmond he wandered to Boston and published 
a little volume of poems, but they attracted no attention, 
and to earn a living he enlisted in the army under the name 
of Edgar A. Perry. For two years he served faithfully and 
well — so well, in fact, that Mr. Allan, believing he had re- 
formed, secured an appointment for him to the West Point 
Military Academy. Poe was now twenty-one and is de- 
scribed by fellow students at West Point as courteous, but 
proud, reserved, sensitive, discontented, and disposed to 
criticize everybody and everything. Although a good student, 
he deliberately neglected the military routine of the academy 
and was therefore promptly dismissed. 

As Mr. Allan refused to do anything more for him, he 
went to New York to try his fortune there. He issued 
another little book of poems, better than the first, but not 
good enough to bring him into notice. Then he went to 
Baltimore and worked for the newspapers, making barely 
enough to keep him alive ; but after a year or two of this sort 
of work he wrote one day a short story called a The Manu- 
script Found in a Bottle," which won him a prize of one 
hundred dollars and the friendship of John P. Robinson, a 
literary man, who secured for him a position on the Southern 
Literary Messenger of Richmond. Here was a chance for 
Poe to redeem himself, and a bright future opened out before 
him. He married a young girl, Virginia Clemm, to whom he 
was devotedly attached, and enjoyed a few happy years; 
but soon he had trouble with the owners of the Messenger 



388 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

and left them. He then drifted to New York and Phila- 
delphia, secured several editorial positions — but did not 
hold them long — and won another prize of a hundred dollars 
for his story "The Gold Bug." 

The great tragedy of his life occurred in New York, whither 
he went in 1844. His young wife, Virginia, was not strong, 
and grew weaker every day. He could not earn enough to 
give her the comforts that she needed. They rented a little 
cottage at Fordham, in the suburbs, but often they had no 
heat and insufficient food. At last Virginia died, and Poe 
was nearly crazed with grief. 

The next few years were almost like a nightmare. Poe 
wrote some of his finest poems and stories, but was under 
a cloud of depression which he could not shake off. In 1849 
he went to Richmond, earned a considerable sum of money 
from a lecture, and set out for New York with fifteen hundred 
dollars in his pocket. What happened on the way no one 
knows, but he was found ill and unconscious in Baltimore, 
with his baggage and money gone. He was taken to a hos- 
pital, where he died a few days later. 



THE BELLS 

[This is probably the most remarkable example which we have in 
English of a poem in which the words themselves suggest by their sound 
the thing which they represent. In it we seem to hear the ringing of 
the bells. We feel the brightness and gayety of the sleigh bells, the joy 
of the wedding bells, the wild alarm of the fire bells, and the solemn 
tolling of the funeral bells. The first draft of the poem was written 
one evening in the summer of 1847, a few months after the death of 
Poe's wife and during a time when the poet was weary and despondent. 
He was visiting a friend in New York; the window was open, and the 
sound of church bells floated in. He remarked that he must write a 
poem, but that he had no subject and no inspiration. His friend sug- 
gested the bells. He replied, "I so dislike the sound of bells to-night, 
I cannot write." But the friend persisted and gave him a sheet of paper 



390 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

heading it for him "The Bells, by E. A. Poe." Thus urged, he wrote 
two stanzas, the first and the last of the poem nearly as we now have it. 
At a later time he wrote the two intermediate stanzas.] 



Hear the sledges with the bells, 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
5 In the icy air of night ! 

While the stars, that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 

With a crystalline delight ; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
10 In a sort of Runic rime, 

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

15 Hear the mellow wedding bells, 

Golden bells ! 
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! 
20 From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtledove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 
25 Oh, from out the sounding cells, 

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the Future ! how it tells 
30 Of the rapture that impels 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 391 

To the swinging and the ringing 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the riming and the chiming of the bells ! 5 

Hear the loud alarum bells, 
Brazen bells ! 
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! 
In the startled ear of night 

How they scream out their affright ! 10 

Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 15 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit or never, 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 20 

Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
What a tale their terror tells 
Of despair ! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar ! 
What a horror they outpour 25 

On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 
By the twanging 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows ; 30 

Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, — 



392 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells, 
Of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
5 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells ! 



Hear the tolling of the bells, 
Iron bells ! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 
In the silence of the night 
10 How we shiver with affright 

At the melancholy menace of their tone ! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 
Is a groan. 
i 5 And the people — ah, the people, 

They that dwell up in the steeple, 

All alone, 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 
In that muffled monotone, 
20 Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman, 
They are neither brute nor human, 
They are ghouls 
25 And their king it is who tolls ; 

And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 

Rolls 
A paean from the bells ; 
And his merry bosom swells 
30 With the paean of the bells, 

And he dances, and he yells : 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rime, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 393 

To the paean of the bells, 
Of the bells : 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rime, 
To the throbbing of the bells, 5 

Of the bells, bells, bells — 
To the sobbing of the bells ; 

Keeping time, time, time, 
As he knells, knells, knells, 

In a happy Runic rime, 10 

To the rolling of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells : 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells — 15 

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Poe's life. 2. When and how was this poem 
written? 3. For what is it remarkable? 4. Point out the words in 
the poem that have the sound which they express. 5. Point out ex- 
amples of alliteration (note the double alliteration in the first two lines) . 
6. Point out lines that are especially musical. 7. Select the words 
that rime. 8. What kind of bells are described in the first stanza? 
Substitute a more common word for "sledges." Why does the poet 
call these bells "silver"? (Note the bright, silvery character of this 
stanza and express it in your reading.) 9. Explain "crystalline delight," 
"Runic rime," "tintinnabulation." In the repetition of "bells," think 
of sleigh bells jingling with each step of the horse. 10. In what one word 
might you express the feeling of the first stanza ? 

1 1 . What bells are in the second stanza ? Why "golden"? Explain 
"molten-golden." What other word in this stanza expresses the same 
idea as "molten"? 12. Explain "sounding cells," "gush of euphony," 
"voluminously." 13. In the repetition of "bells" express the swinging 
and the golden, mellow, joyous qualities. 14. In what one word might 
the feeling of the second stanza be expressed ? 



394 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

1 5 . What are the bells of the third stanza ? Why "brazen " ? 1 6 . Ex- 
plain the figure in "startled ear of night" ; in "their affright." 17. Why 
are the fire bells said to shriek? 18. Explain "mad expostulation." 
Why is the fire said to be deaf? 19. Explain the " desperate desire " 
of the fire. What do you see in the action of flames that makes this 
metaphor appropriate ? Explain "palpitating air." 20. Express in the 
repetition of "bells" the jangling and the ebb and flow. 21. Explain the 
figure in "ebbs and flows." 

22. What are the bells of the fourth stanza? Why iron, rather than 
brazen or golden? 23. Define "monody." 24. What in Poe's life and 
character explains why he would "shiver with affright" at this sound? 
25. Explain "melancholy menace." 26. Note the fine figure in "the 
rust within their throats." What kind of sound should you associate 
with a rusty throat? 27. Poe's idea is that the demons are ringing these 
bells. It will not be worth while to try to find the thought of this poem. 
It expresses mood rather than thought. 28. Explain "monotone," 
"ghouls," "paean." 29. In reading the last stanza give special emphasis 
and expression to the words "tolling," "bells," "shiver," "groan," 
"ghouls," "tolls," "rolls," "paean," "dances," "yells," "time," "throb- 
bing," "sobbing," "knells," "moaning," "groaning." What single word 
would best express the feeling of the stanza? 30. Which of the bells is 
best described? 

Other poems of Poe : "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," "To Helen" 
("Helen, thy Beauty is to me"), and "Eldorado." 

Other poems in which the sound harmonizes with the sense : Southey's 
"The Cataract of Lodore," Tennyson's "The Brook." 

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM 

[This story was first published in a magazine in 1841, when Poe was 
living in Philadelphia. The experience which he makes the fisherman 
narrate is entirely fictitious, though the scene, except for some exaggera- 
tion, is correctly described. The Maelstrom, or Moskoestrom, may be 
found located in geographies, between two of the Lofoden Islands, off 
the coast of Norway. It is a strong tidal current with a huge eddy, in 
which small boats are often lost, and which has given rise to many wild 
traditions. Poe was interested in scientific studies and worked out an 
explanation which gives to his story an air of possibility. The points 
to be noticed are the vividness of the descriptions and the skillful con- 
struction of the story. The selection is somewhat abridged.] 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 395 

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For 
some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to 
speak. "-Not long ago/' said he at length, "and I could 
have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of 
my sons; but about three years past there happened to me 5 
an event such as never happened before to mortal man — 
or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of — and 
the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have 
broken me up body and soul. 

"The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the 10 
Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher — hold on 
to the grass if you feel giddy — so — and look out beyond 
the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea." 

I looked dizzily and beheld a wide expanse of ocean. To 
the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay 15 
outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly 
black and beetling cliff. 

"The island in the distance," resumed the old man, "is 
called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is 
Moskoe. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change 20 
in the water?" 

As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and grad- 
ually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of 
buffaloes upon an American prairie. In five minutes the 
whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable 25 
fury ; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the 
main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, 
seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst 
suddenly into frenzied convulsion, heaving, boiling, hissing, 
gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirl- 30 
ing and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which 
water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents. 

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another 
radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat 
more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, 35 



396 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where 
none had been seen before. These streaks, at length spread- 
ing out to a great distance and entering into combination, 
seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly 

5 — very suddenly — this assumed a distinct and definite 
existence in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The 
edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleam- 
ing spray ; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth 
of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could 

10 fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, 
inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, 
speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and swel- 
tering motion and sending forth to the winds an appalling 
voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty 

15 cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven. 

"This," said I at length to the old man — "this can be 
nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom." 

"So it is sometimes termed," said he. "We Norwe- 
gians call it the Moskoestrom, from the island of Moskoe in 

20 the midway. 

" Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner- 
rigged smack of about seventy tons burden, with which we 
were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, 
nearly to Vurrgh. It was on the tenth of July, 18 — . 

25 The three of us — my two brothers and myself — had 
crossed over to the islands about two o'clock p.m. and 
soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish. It was just 
seven by my watch when we weighed and started for home, 
so as to make the worst of the Strom at slack water, which 

30 we knew would be at eight. 

" We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter 
and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never 
dreaming of danger. All at once we were taken aback by 
a breeze from over Helseggen. We put the boat on the 

35 wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 397 

I was upon the point of proposing to return to the anchor- 
age, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered 
with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most 
amazing velocity. 

" In less than a minute the storm was upon us — in less 5 
than two the sky was entirely overcast — and what with 
this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that 
we could not see each other in the smack. Such a hurricane 
as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. At the first 
puff both our masts went by the board as if they had been 10 
sawed off — the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, 
who had lashed himself to it for safety. As soon as I had let 
the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet 
against the narrow gunwale of the bow and with my hands 
grasping a ringbolt near the foot of the foremast. 15 

" For some moments we were completely deluged, and all 
this time I held my breath and clung to the bolt. Pres- 
ently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does 
in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some 
measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of 20 
the stupor that had come over me and to collect my senses 
so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp 
my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for 
joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard — but the 
next moment all this joy was turned into horror, for he 25 
put his mouth close to my ear and screamed out the word 
1 Moskoestrom ! ' 

" A singular change had come over the heavens. Around 
in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly 
overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear 30 
sky — as clear as I ever saw — and of a deep bright blue — 
and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster 
that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything 
about us with the greatest distinctness — but what a scene 
it was to light up ! 35 



398 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

kl So far we had ridden the swells very cleverly, but presently 
a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter 
and bore us with it as it rose — up — up — as if into the 
sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise 

5 so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and 
a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I were fall- 
ing from some .lofty mountain top in a dream. But while 
we were up I had thrown a quick glance around — and that 
one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exact position in an 

10 instant. The Moskoestrom whirlpool was about a quarter 
of a mile dead ahead. 

" It could not have been more than two minutes after- 
wards until we suddenly felt the waves subside and were 
enveloped in foam. We were now in the belt of surf that 

15 always surrounds the whirl ; and I thought, of course, that 
another moment would plunge us into the abyss. 

" It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the 
very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we 
were only approaching it. I began to reflect how magnifi- 

20 cent a thing it was to die in such a manner and how fool- 
ish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my 
own individual life in view of so wonderful a manifestation 
of God's power. After a little while I became possessed with 
the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively 

25 felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was 
going to make. 

" How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impos- 
sible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an 
hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more 

30 and more into the middle of the surge and then nearer and 
nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never 
let go of the ringbolt. My brother was at the stern, holding 
on to a small empty water cask which had been securely 
lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing 

35 on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 399 

first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let 
go his hold upon this and made for the ring. I knew it could 
make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so 
I let him have the bolt and went astern to the cask. Scarcely 
had I secured myself in my new position when we gave 5 
a wild lurch to starboard and rushed headlong into the 
abyss. 

" Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and ad- 
miration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared 
to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the in- 10 
terior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious 
in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been 
mistaken for ebony but for the bewildering rapidity with 
which they spun around and for the gleaming and ghastly 
radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from 15 
that circular rift amid the clouds, which I have already de- 
scribed, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black 
walls and far away down into the inmost recesses of the 
abyss. 

" The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom 20 
of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing 
distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything 
there was enveloped, and over which there hung a mag- 
nificent rainbow. Both above and below us were visible 
fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber, and 25 
trunks of trees, with many smaller articles. 

" I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that 
strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then 
thrown forth by the Moskoestrom. By far the greater 
number of the articles were shattered in the most extraor-30 
dinary way, but then I distinctly recollected that there were 
some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could 
not account for this difference except by supposing that the 
roughened fragments were the only ones which had been 
completely absorbed — that the others had entered the whirl 35 



400 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

at so late a period of the tide, or from some reason had de- 
scended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the 
bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as 
the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, 
5 that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the 
ocean without undergoing the fate of those which had been 
drawn in more early or absorbed more rapidly. I made also 
three important observations. The first was that as a general 
rule the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent ; 

10 the second, that between two masses of equal extent, the one 
spherical and the other of any other shape, the superiority 
in speed of descent was with the sphere; the third, that 
between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical and 
the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the 

15 more slowly. 

".I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash my- 
self securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to 
cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it 
into the water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, 

20 pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did 
everything in my power to make him understand what I 
was about to do, but he shook his head despairingly and 
refused to move from his station by the ringbolt. The 
emergency admitted of no delay ; and so, with a bitter struggle, 

25 1 resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by 
means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and 
precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another 
moment's hesitation. 

" The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. 

jolt might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my quit- 
ting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance 
beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid 
succession and bearing my loved brother with it plunged head- 
long, at once and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The 

35 barrel to which I was attached sank very little farther than 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 401 

half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot 
at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place 
in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of 
the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The 
gyrations of the whirl grew gradually less and less violent. 5 
By degrees the froth and the rainbow disappeared and the 
bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was 
clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was 
setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the 
surface of the ocean in full view of the shores of Lofoden 10 
and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoestrom had 
been. It was the hour of the slack, but the sea still heaved 
in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I 
I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom and in a 
few minutes was hurried down the coast into the grounds of 15 
the fishermen. A boat picked me up, exhausted from fatigue, 
and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the 
memory of its horror." 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. What basis of truth is there in this tale? 2. Explain "ramparts 
of the world," "beetling cliff," "gyrating in gigantic and innumer- 
able vortices," "the germ of another more vast." 3. Note the figure of 
Niagara sending up "an appalling voice ... in its agony to heaven." 
What does this tell you of the poet? Would Longfellow or Lanier 
have used such a metaphor? 4. Explain "a schooner-rigged smack of 
about seventy tons burden." What effect does this exactness have on 
the story? Note other cases. 

5. Explain "slack water." Why did the fisherman wish to make 
the most of the Strom at slack water ? 6. Explain the nautical phrases 
on pages 396, 397. 7. What is the figure in "Presently our little boat 
gave herself a shake" ? 8. Note the picture of the moon shining through 
the rift of blue sky. What effect does this have on the description that 
follows? 9. Explain "under the counter," "the coop of the counter." 

Another good tale of Poe's for this grade is "The Gold Bug." 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

1803-1882 

One cannot look at Emerson's picture without feeling 
that he was not only wise but good. Look at the face thought- 
fully. It is a face to love and trust. You will want to count 
this man among your friends. 

Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. His father , who was 
a minister, died when the boy Ralph was only eight years old, 
and left the family very poor. There were six children. It is 
said that one winter Ralph and the brother who was nearest 
his own size had to make one coat answer for both of them. 
One day Ralph would go to school and his brother would 
stay at home ; the next day his brother would go and Ralph 
would stay at home. But that did not prevent them from 
keeping up their work. 

One who knew Emerson when a boy in school has said : 

There he stands, that boy whose image, more than any other, 
is still deeply stamped upon my mind, as I then saw him and loved 
him — I knew not why — and thought him so angelic and re- 
markable, feeling towards him more than a boy's emotion, as if 
a new spring of brotherly affection had suddenly broken loose in 
my heart. There is no indication of turbulence or disquiet about 
him ; but a happy combination of energy and gentleness. 

He was ready for college at fourteen and earned his way 
by waiting on the tables in the college dining hall and doing 
errands for the president. He won a prize of five dollars for 
public speaking, and sent it home to his mother to buy a shawl, 
but she felt that she could not afford a shawl and used it 

402 



404 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

instead to pay a debt. Ralph was always doing something 
for others. After graduating he taught school for a time in 
Boston and earned money to help his younger brothers through 
college. Then he studied theology, became a minister, and 
preached in the Old North Church. 

After several years he gave up his church work and spent 
his time wholly in writing and lecturing; but his lecturing 
was really preaching, and he did great good by it. Some of 
the wise things which he said were : 

They can conquer who believe they can. 

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day 
surmount a fear. 

Write it in your heart that every day is the best day in the year. 

Hitch your wagon to a star. 

There is no defeat except from within. 

The only way to have a friend is to be one. 

Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy. 

Emerson spent some time in England and made many 
friends there — among them Carlyle and Coleridge and 
Wordsworth. When he returned to this country he settled 
in Concord, Massachusetts, and occupied for a time the Old 
Manse, where his grandfather had lived before him and where 
Hawthorne afterwards made his home. Here he wrote his 
lectures and his first book, " Nature." He loved the woods 
about Concord and often went out alone to do his writing 
there. 

A little later he moved into another house, brighter and 
more cheerful, with tall horse-chestnut trees in front of it 
and a garden and a grove behind. In good weather the grove 
was his study. Here he lived a happy life. Mrs. Emerson 
was a woman of culture and good sense, and their four children 
made the old home gay enough. Emerson wrote to a friend : 
"Life is all preface until we have children. Then it is deep 
and solid." 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 405 

During Emerson's life at Concord he published several 
volumes of essays and the books ''Representative Men," 
"The Conduct of Life," and "Society and Solitude," also 
a book of poems. The Hawthornes and the Alcotts were 
his neighbors, and many unknown friends came from near and 
far to talk with him or even simply to shake his hand. 

When he was seventy he went abroad for the third time, 
and again visited Carlyle. Upon his return his Concord 
friends and neighbors welcomed him in an elaborate 
celebration, and the entire village, with many distinguished 
visitors, met him and escorted him home under a triumphal 
arch of flowers. His later years were made happy by the 
love and homage of a host of friends on both sides of the 
Atlantic. He lived to be nearly eighty years old and died 
only a few months after he had attended the funeral of his 
friend Longfellow. 

Emerson was one of the greatest thinkers that America has 
given to the world ; and — what is equally important — he 
had the rare gift of being able to put great thoughts into few 
words. All that he wrote had the effect of stimulating his 
readers or hearers to live out the best that was in them, and to 
do their duty to God and man. This is well expressed in the 
oft-quoted stanza from his "Voluntaries" : 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 

When duty whispers low, "Thou must," 

The youth replies, "I can." 



CONCORD HYMN 

[You remember there was a fight at Concord Bridge, on April nine- 
teenth, 1775, — the first battle of the Revolution. On the sixty-first 
anniversary of this event a monument was placed at the bridge to mark 
the spot. Upon it was a noble bronze statue of a minuteman, gun in 
hand. Public exercises were held at the unveiling of the monument, 



406 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

and Emerson was asked to write a poem for the occasion. He wrote the 
" Concord Hymn," and the first stanza of it was cut upon the monument.] 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 

And fired the shot heard round the world. 

5 The foe long since in silence slept ; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
10 We set to-day a votive stone ; 

That memory may their deed redeem, 
When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 
15 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 

The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell the story of Emerson's life. 2. Memorize his sayings quoted 
on page 404, and tell what you think they mean. 3. Tell how the 
"Concord Hymn" came to be written. 4. Describe in your own 
words the battle at Concord Bridge and tell what caused it. (The 
"rude bridge," which stood there at the time of the battle, was of wood 
and has since been replaced by a structure of stone and cement.) 5. What 
would be a more common word for "flood," in the first line? 6. Who 
were the "embattled farmers"? What does "embattled" mean? 
7. What is meant by the shot's being "heard round the world"? 

8. In the second stanza, what three things are mentioned to show 
how long a time had passed since the battle ? How many years was it ? 
q. What is a "votive stone"? 10. Of what advantage is it to mark 
the spots where great deeds have been done in our nation's history? 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 407 

11. Put into simpler words "That memory may their deed redeem." 

12. The last stanza is addressed to the Spirit of Liberty. What did 
this spirit make the minute-men of Concord do? 13. Explain the 
line "To die, and leave their children free." 14. Does the quietness of 
the poem seem to make it more earnest or less so? Does noise ever 
show real patriotism? 15. Memorize the poem. 

Read also Longfellow's " Paul Revere's Ride " ; Holmes's "Lexington," 
and "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle"; Hawthorne's "The 
Boston Massacre," and "The Tea Party and Lexington." 



THE HUMBLEBEE 

Burly, dozing humblebee, 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
Far-off heats through seas to seek ; 
I will follow thee alone, 
Thou animated torrid zone ! 
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 
Let me chase thy waving lines ; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 

Insect lover of the sun, 

Joy of thy dominion ! 

Sailor of the atmosphere ; 

Swimmer through the waves of air ; 

Voyager of light and noon ; 

Epicurean of June ; 

Wait, I prithee, till I come 

Within earshot of thy hum ; 

All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 
With a net of shining haze 
Silvers the horizon wall 
And with softness touching all, 



10 



15 



408 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Tints the human countenance 
With a color of romance, 
And infusing subtle heats, 
Turns the sod to violets, 
5 Thou, in sunny solitudes, 

Rover of the underwoods, 
The green silence dost displace 
With thy mellow, breezy bass. 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 
10 Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 

Tells of countless sunny hours, 
Long days, and solid banks of flowers ; 
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 
In Indian wildernesses found ; 
15 Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 

Firmest cheer, and birdlike pleasure. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 

Hath my insect never seen ; 

But violets and bilberry bells, 
20 Maple sap and daffodels, 

Grass with green flag half-mast high, 

Succory to match the sky, 

Columbine with horn of honey, 

Scented fern and agrimony, 
25 Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue, 

And brier roses, dwelt among ; 

All beside was unknown waste, 

All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
30 Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 

Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 409 

Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 
When the fierce northwestern blast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast, 
Thou already slumberest deep ; 
Woe and want thou canst outsleep ; 
Want and woe, which torture us, 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

I. Describe the humblebee. What is its more common name? 
2. Explain " Where thou art is clime for me." (The bee seems the very 
spirit, of summer. One need not go to Porto Rico to find heat, if he will 
only follow the humblebee.) 3. Explain " animated torrid zone." 
(Perhaps the bands around the bee's body suggested zones; perhaps 
its warm yellow and its fondness for sunshine suggested heat ; perhaps, 
too, the sensation made by the bee's sting seemed rather warm.) 4. Ex- 
plain "zigzag steerer." (When a bee is laden with honey it flies home 
in a straight line ; when hunting for honey, it flies in zigzag or wavy 
lines.) 5. Why is the bee a "desert cheerer"? Why an "epicurean"? 
Give the origin of "epicurean." 6. Explain "All without is martyr- 
dom." 

7. Note and explain the description of a hazy day in spring. (The 
indistinct light through the haze has more of romance because it leaves 
something to be imagined, while the clear sunlight shows everything.) 

8. Explain "infusing subtle heats," "sunny solitudes," "rover of 
the underwoods," "green silence," "mellow, breezy bass." Find in 
the poem two other expressions for the sound made by the humblebee. 

9. In what way does the midsummer pet the humblebee? ("Crone," 
as used here, is the same as "crony," or favorite companion.) 10. What 
does the bee's hum suggest to the poet? Explain "gulfs of sweetness," 
"Syrian peace." (The heat suggests Syria, as in the first stanza it 
suggested Porto Rico.) 

II. The bee will touch nothing unclean. Lines 27 and 28, page 408, 
mean that the bee pays no attention to anything except the sweet and 
good things ; that all else is to him simply like a picture, without any 
real being. How, then, is the humblebee wiser than many human 



410 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

prophets? 12. What does the bee do in winter? What effect does that 
have on "want and woe"? 13. Find in this poem the different names 
given to the bee. Which are the best? 14. What lesson did the bee 
teach the poet ? 

THE RHODORA 
ON BEING ASKED WHENCE IS THE FLOWER 

In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
5 The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 

Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
Here might the redbird come his plumes to cool, 

And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
10 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew ; 
15 But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 

The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Describe the Rhodora. 2. Explain "leafless blooms," "to please the 
desert." What figure of speech? 3. Why is the water called black? 
4. What is the redbird (here, the scarlet tanager), and why does the poet 
speak of cooling his plumes? 5. Explain "cheapens his array," "Beauty 
is its own excuse for being." 6. What is meant by " the selfsame Power " ? 
7. What idea is conveyed in "simple ignorance"? 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 

The city of Portland, on the Maine coast, somewhat more 
than a hundred years ago was a busy, restless little seaport — 
its harbor thronged with tall-masted, full-rigged ships, its 
wharves piled high with merchandise, its streets noisy with 
the talk of sailors and tradesmen, its shipyards ringing with the 
blows of the mallet and the sound of the saw. It was not a 
town from which we should expect a poet, yet it was the birth- 
place of Longfellow. 

February 27th, 1807, was the day on which Longfellow was 
born, — and the anniversary of it is still celebrated in many 
of the schools of America. It was thirteen years after the 
birth of Bryant, three years after that of Hawthorne, and 
four years after that of Emerson. Longfellow, as a boy, was 
a slender, fair-haired lad, who spent much of his time after 
school hours in playing by the seashore or wandering along the 
wharves, eager to see all that was going on and always strangely 
fascinated by the sea. In one of his poems he says : 

I remember the black wharves and the ships, 
And the sea-tides tossing free : 
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea. 

He could see beauty and mystery and magic where another 
could see only ships and water ; and it was this power to 
discover everywhere the beautiful and the significant that 
made him a poet. Years afterward he showed his feeling for 

411 



412 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

the sea in such poems as "The Saga of King Olaf," "The 
Skeleton in Armor," and "The Wreck of the Hesperus." 

The first school which Longfellow attended was kept by an 
old lady called Ma'am Fellows. She never allowed the 
children to smile during school hours, and was so strict that 
her pupils felt like prisoners. At six, Longfellow, with a sigh 
of relief, left this school and was sent to another, known as 
Portland Academy, where one of his teachers said that he 
could "spell and read very well, and add and multiply 
numbers." One of his teachers at Portland Academy was 
Jacob Abbott, who wrote the "Rollo Books" for children — 
books which were remarkably popular in their day, but are 
now seldom seen. 

While Longfellow was in the academy he wrote his first 
poem. It was called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond." He 
wanted to have it published in one of the two Portland news- 
papers, but was afraid to take it to either of the editors. At 
last he went one night to one of the newspaper offices and 
dropped it through a hole in the door. The next morning, 
and every morning for many weeks, he looked anxiously for 
it in the paper, but it did not appear. By that time he had 
grown braver — so brave, in fact, that he went to the editor 
and asked him to give back the poem. Having received it 
he took it to the editor of another paper and there it was 
published. After that he wrote poetry whenever he could, 
and found no difficulty in having it accepted. 

When only fourteen years old Longfellow went to Bowdoin 
College, and was in the same class with Hawthorne, Franklin 
Pierce — afterward president of the United States — and 
several other young men who in later years became famous. 
He was a fine scholar and stood near the head of his class. 

After finishing his college course he traveled in Europe, 
studying the languages and hearing a great many interesting 
old tales which he afterward retold in verse. Then he taught 
in college for nearly twenty years — first at Bowdoin and 



414 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

afterward at Harvard. At Harvard he lived in the fine old 
"Craigie House," which had once been used by Washington 
during the Revolutionary War. This old home was made 
merry by the play and laughter of Longfellow's five children. 
In "The Children's Hour" he tells how his three little girls 
used to come into the library every night after his work was 
done, and how they would climb into his chair, kissing him 
and romping with him. 

On the way to his classes he passed each day an old black- 
smith shop with a great, overhanging chestnut tree beside it. 
Here he liked to stop and watch the blacksmith beating the 
red-hot iron on his anvil before the forge. Children, too, 
would stop on their way to school and look in with him at the 
open door. Longfellow wrote a poem about this blacksmith, 
and years afterward, when the street was widened and the old 
chestnut tree had to be cut down, the school children of 
Cambridge brought their small savings and had a chair made 
out of the wood of the old tree, giving it to him as a present, 
on his seventy-second birthday. He wrote for them the poem 
"From my Arm-Chair," and after that he let the children 
who came to visit him sit in the chair and gave to each a 
printed copy of "The Village Blacksmith." 

Long before this Longfellow had given up his work as a 
teacher and was devoting all his time to the writing of poetry. 
Almost every American knows "Hiawatha," "Evangeline," 
"The Courtship of Miles Standish," and such of his shorter 
poems, as "The Children's Hour," "Paul Revere's Ride," 
"The Psalm of Life," and "The Village Blacksmith." 

It is said that once when traveling in England, a laboring 
man, to whom he had been pointed out, stopped him on the 
street and began to recite his poem "Excelsior," whereat 
Longfellow was so overcome that he turned and fled. 

As Longfellow grew older visitors from all over the world 
came to see him and to shake hands with him. Many 
children came, and of all his visitors he loved the children 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 415 

best. He was kind to all comers, though they robbed him of 
much valuable time; and he never refused his autograph, 
sometimes writing it sixty or seventy times a day. No other 
American poet has been so loved and honored. When he died, 
in 1882, there were thousands of readers all over America 
and England who felt that they had lost a friend. 

EVANGELINE 

[The poem "Evangeline" is based upon a legend of the French and 
Indian War. The British, some forty years before, had by conquest 
and treaty obtained possession of the French province of Acadie, or 
Acadia, now Nova Scotia. But the French inhabitants had never loved 
their English conquerors, and it became a problem for the English to 
know what to do with them. At length it was decided to expel so many 
of them that the English settlers would be able to overawe the remainder. 
About one half — estimated at seven thousand — were thus deported 
in 1755 and scattered among the English colonists farther south. 

The poem is in two parts. The first part describes the peaceful life 
of the Acadian farmers in the Basin of Minas and around the village of 
Grand-Pre. Benedict Belief ontaine, the wealthiest of them, a man of 
seventy, but hale and strong, lived happily with his only child Evangeline, 
a beautiful girl of seventeen. Young Gabriel Lajeunesse, son of Basil 
the blacksmith, loved Evangeline and was to be married to her. Accord- 
ing to the Acadian custom a feast was given by Evangeline's father to 
celebrate the betrothal. It happened that on this same day the English 
governor had summoned all the men of the settlement into the church 
to hear a proclamation. The following selection describes what happened.] 

Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard, 
Stript of its golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. 
There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the 

notary seated ; 
There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. 
Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider press and the 

beehives, 5 

Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts 

and of waistcoats. 



416 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his 
snow-white 

Hair, as it waved in the wind ; and the jolly face of the fiddler 

Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the 
embers. 

Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, 
5"Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres," and "Le Carillon de 
Dunkerque," 

And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. 

Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances 

Under the orchard trees and down the path to the meadows ; 

Old folk and young together, and children mingled among 
them. 
10 Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter ! 

Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the black- 
smith ! 

So passed the morning away. And lo ! with a summons 

sonorous 
Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a 

drum beat. 
Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in 

the churchyard, 
is Waited the women. They stood by the graves and hung 

on the headstones 
Garlands of autumn leaves and evergreens fresh from the 

forest. 
Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly 

among them 
Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor 
Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and 

casement, — 

20 Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal 
Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the 

soldiers. 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 417 

Then uprose their commander and spake from the steps of 

the altar, 
Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission. 
"You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's 

orders. 
Clement and kind has he been ; but how you have answered 

his kindness 
Let your own hearts reply ! To my natural make and my 

temper 5 

Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous. 
Yet must I bow and obey and deliver the will of our monarch : 
Namely, that all your lands and dwellings and cattle of all 

kinds 
Forfeited be to the crown ; and that you yourselves from this 

province 
Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell 

there 10 

Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people ! 
Prisoners now I declare you, for such is his Majesty's 

pleasure!" 
As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer, 
Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hail- 
stones 
Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his 

windows, 15 

Hiding the sun and strewing the ground with thatch from the 

house-roofs ; 
Bellowing fly the herds and seek to break their inclosures ; 
So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the 

speaker. 
Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then 

rose 
Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, 20 

And by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door- 
way. 



4 i8 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Vain was the hope of escape ; and cries and fierce imprecations 
Rang through the house of prayer ; and high o'er the heads 

of the others 
Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the black- 
smith, 
As on a stormy sea a spar is tossed by the billows. 
5 Flushed was his face and distorted with passion ; and wildly 

he shouted : 
"Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn 

them allegiance ! 
Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and 

our harvests!" 
More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a 

soldier 
Smote him upon the mouth and dragged him down to the 

pavement. 

IO In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention 
Lo ! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician 
Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the 

altar. 
Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into 

silence 
All that clamorous throng ; and thus he spake to his people ; 
1 5 Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and 

mournful 
Spake he, as after the tocsin's alarum distinctly the clock 

strikes. 
"What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has 

seized you? 
Forty years of my life have I labored among you and taught 

you, 
Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another ! 
20 Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and 

privations ? 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 419 

Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness ? 
This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you 

profane it 
Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred? 
Lo ! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon 

you ! 
See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy com- 
passion ! 5 
Hark ! how those lips still repeat the prayer, ' Father, forgive 

them ! ' 
Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail 

us, 
Let us repeat it now, and say, '0 Father, forgive them!'" 
Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his 

people 
Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate 

outbreak, 10 

While they repeated his prayer, and said, "0 Father, forgive 

them!" 

Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from 

the altar ; 
Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest, and the people 

responded, 
Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave 

Maria 
Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with 

devotion translated, 15 

Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. 

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and 

on all sides 
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and 

children. 
Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand 



4 20 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, 

descending, 
Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor and roofed 

each 
Peasant's cottage with golden thatch and emblazoned its 

windows. 
Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the 

table ; 
5 There stood the wheaten loaf and the honey fragrant with wild 

flowers ; 
There stood the tankard of ale and the cheese fresh brought 

from the dairy ; 
And at the head of the board the great armchair of the 

farmer. 
Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset 
Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial 

meadows. 
10 Ah ! on her spirit, within, a deeper shadow had fallen, 
And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial ascended — 
Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and 

patience ! 
Then, all-forgetful of self, she wandered into the village, 
Cheering with looks and words the mournful hearts of the 

women, 
15 As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they departed, 
Urged by their household cares and the weary feet of their 

children. 
Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering vapors 
Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from 

Sinai. 
Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. 

20 Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline 
lingered. 
All was silent within ; and in vain at the door and the windows 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 421 

Stood she and listened and looked, until, overcome by emotion, 
" Gabriel!" cried she aloud with tremulous voice; but no 

answer 
Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave 

of the living. 
Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her 

father. 
Smoldered the fire on the hearth, on the board was the supper 

untasted, 5 

Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phantoms 

of terror. 
Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her chamber. 
In the dead of the night she heard the disconsolate rain fall 
Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore tree by the 

window. 
Keenly the lightning flashed, and the voice of the echoing 

thunder IO 

Told her that God was in heaven and governed the world he 

created ! 

Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the 
fifth day 
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm- 
house. 
Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, 
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian 

women, i 5 

Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the 

seashore, 
Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings, 
Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the 

woodland. 
Close at their sides their children ran and urged on the oxen, 
While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of 
playthings. v 20 



4 2 2 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried ; and there 
on the sea beach 
Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. 
All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats 

ply; 

All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. 

5 Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, 

Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the 

churchyard. 
Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden 

the church doors 
Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy 

procession 
Followed the long-imprisoned but patient Acadian farmers, 
io Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their 

country, 
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and 

wayworn, 
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended 
Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and 

their daughters. 
Foremost the young men came; and raising together their 

voices, 
15 Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic missions : 
" Sacred heart of the Savior ! inexhaustible fountain ! 
Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and 

patience !" 
Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood 

by the wayside 
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine 

above them 
20 Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. 

Halfway down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, 
Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 423 

Calmly and sadly she waited until the procession approached 

her 
And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion, 
Tears then filled her eyes, and eagerly running to meet him, 
Clasped she his hands and laid her head on his sboulder and 

whispered, 
" Gabriel ! be of good cheer ! for if we love one another 5 

Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may 

happen !" 
Smiling she spake these words ; then suddenly paused, for her 

father 
Saw she slowly advancing. Alas ! how changed was his 

aspect ! 
Gone was the glow from his cheek and the fire from his eye, 

and his footstep 
Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his 

bosom. 10 

But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and em- 
braced him, 
Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort 

availed not. 
Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful 

procession. 

There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of em- 
barking. 
Busily plied the freighted boats ; and in the confusion i 5 

Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, 

saw their children 
Left on the land, extending their arms with wildest entreaties. 
So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried, 
While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her 

father. 
Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the 

twilight 20 



424 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Deepened and darkened around ; and in haste the refluent 

ocean 
Fled away from the shore and left the line of the sand-beach 
Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery 

seaweed. 
Farther back, in the midst of the household goods and the 

wagons, 
5 Like to a gypsy camp or a leaguer after a battle, 
All escape cut off by the sea and the sentinels near them, 
Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. 
Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean, 
Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles and leaving 
10 Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the 

sailors. 
Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their 

pastures ; 
Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of milk from their 

udders ; 
Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the 

farmyard, 
Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the 

milkmaid. 
15 Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus 

sounded, 
Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the 

windows. 

But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been 
kindled, 
Built of the driftwood thrown on the sands from wrecks in the 

tempest. 
Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were 
gathered, 
20 Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of 
children. 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 425 

Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his 

parish, 
Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and 

cheering, 
Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Merita's desolate seashore. 
Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her 

father 
And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man 5 
Haggard and hollow and wan and without either thought or 

emotion, 
E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been 

taken. 
Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer 

him, 
Vainly offered him food ; yet he moved not, he looked not, he 

spake not, 
But with a vacant stare ever gazed at the flickering 

firelight. 10 

"Benedicite !" murmured the priest in tones of compassion. 
More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his 

accents 
Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a 

threshold, 
Hushed by the scene he beholds and the awful presence of 

sorrow. 
Silently therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden, 15 
Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars, that above them 
Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows 

of mortals. 
Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in 

silence. 

Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autumn the 
blood-red 
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven and o'er the horizon 20 



426 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and 

meadow, 
Seizing the rocks and the rivers and piling huge shadows 

together. 
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village, 
Gleamed on the sky and the sea and the ships that lay in the 

roadstead. 
5 Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were 
Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering 

hands of a martyr. 
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, 

and uplifting, 
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred 

housetops 
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. 

10 These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore 
and on shipboard. 
Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their anguish, 
"We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand 

Pre!" 
Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farmyards, 
Thinking the day had dawned ; and anon the lowing of cattle 
15 Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs in- 
terrupted. 
Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping en- 
campments 
Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska, 
When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of 

the whirlwind, 
Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. 
20 Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and 
the horses 
Broke through their folds and fences and madly rushed o'er 
the meadows. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 427 

Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and 

the maiden 
Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened 

before them ; 
And as they turned at length to speak to their silent 

companion, 
Lo ! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the 

seashore 
Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. 5 
Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden 
Knelt at her father's side and wailed aloud in her terror. 
Then in a swoon she sank and lay with her head on his bosom. 
Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber ; 
And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude 

near her. 10 

Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing 

upon her, 
Pallid, with tearful eyes and looks of saddest compassion 
Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, 
Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around 

her, 
And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses. 15 
Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people : 
"Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season 
Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our 

exile, 
Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." 
Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by the 

seaside, 20 

Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, 
But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand 

Pre. 
And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, 
Lo ! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast 

congregation, 



428 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Solemnly answered the sea and mingled its roar with the 

dirges. 
'Twas the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the 

ocean, 
With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying 

landward. 
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embarking ; 
s And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor, 
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in 

ruins. 

[Evangeline was taken to a place far distant from that to which 
Gabriel was carried. She heard that he was in Louisiana, and set out to 
find him. When she reached there, he had gone. She then followed 
him to the Western plains, and afterwards to Michigan, often meeting 
those who had seen him, and once finding his deserted lodge. Her life 
was spent in this search. During her later years she became a Sister of 
Mercy, and while nursing the sick she found her lover in an almshouse 
• in Philadelphia. He was then old, like herself, and dying of a fever. 
The thought of the poem is the power of faithful love.] 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

■i. Give a sketch of Longfellow's life. 2. Describe briefly the 
situation which led to the expulsion of the Acadians. When did this 
occur? 3. Locate on a map Grand Pre; Minas Basin. 4. What feel- 
ing is expressed in the picture of the betrothal feast? What tells you 
the season of the year? 5- Note the alliteration in the first line. 
Note also the unusual meter of the poem. What other poem have you 
read in the same meter? (The meter is called hexameter and is used 
in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the ^neid, and other classic poems.)^ 6. Ex- 
plain "vibrant." "Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres" (Too' la Boor- 
zhwa' de Shartr'), and "Le Carillon de Dunkerque" (Le Carre'yoN de 
Dun kerk') are old French songs. What is the effect of introducing these 
French names? 

7. What does the sound of "sonorous," page 416, line 12, suggest? 
8. Did the Acadians know what the proclamation was to be? Was 
there any excuse for it? 0. Explain the figure beginning with line 13, 
page 417. 10. What simile is found on page 418? 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 429 

11. Comment upon the speech of Father Felician. Explain "house 
of the Prince of Peace." (As the priest speaks the words in line 4, 
page 419, he points to a crucifix hanging in the church.) 12. Explain 
the reference to "O Father, forgive them"; to Elijah. 13. What 
picture do you see in line 19, page 419? 14. Explain "emblazoned"; 
"ambrosial meadows," giving origin of "ambrosial." 15. Explain the 
figure in line 11, page 420. What was the secret of Evangeline's popu- 
larity ? 

16. What is referred to in "like the Prophet descending from Sinai" 
(Exodus xxxiv, 29-35)? 17. What was the Angelus? 18. Explain "the 
gloomier grave of the living." 19. What did the thunder tell Evangeline ? 
20. What do you see in the picture in lines 12-20, page 421 ? From'this 
what do you judge the Acadians were allowed to take with them ? What 
does the mention of "little fragments of playthings" add to ihe feeling 
expressed in this description? 21. Define "wains," "Gaspereau." 22. 
Why were the men confined in the church ? 

23. Why did they sing as they came out? 24, Substitute a word for 
"spirits departed" in line 20, page 422. 25. What do you see of Evan- 
geline's character in lines 21, page 422 — 12, page 423? 26. What were 
some of the causes of the confusion ? (Remember that few of the Eng- 
lish soldiers understood French, while most of the Acadians did not 
understand English.) 

27. Describe three pictures on pages 424-425. 

28. Explain "refluent ocean," "waifs of the tide," "a leaguer after a 
battle," "retreated the bellowing ocean." 29. Explain the reference 
to "shipwrecked Paul." 30. Discuss the figure in line 7, page 425. 
31. What is meant by "Benedicite"? Explain the figure in lines 12-14, 
page 425. 32. What does the reference to the quiet stars add to the 
description? 33. Explain the figure in lines 19, page 425 — 2, page 426. 
Explain " Titan-like," "its hundred hands." (One of the Greek giants was 
Briareus, who had a hundred hands.) 34. What do you see in the fol- 
lowing picture? Explain the figure "like the quivering hands of a 
martyr." Define "roadstead," "gleeds." 35. What do the crowing and 
other animal sounds add to the picture ? What loss do they suggest ? 
36. Note the figure in lines 16-19, page 426, and compare with that in 
Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom " (page 395). 37. What caused the 
death of Evangeline's father? Explain "without bell or book." (The 
book was that from which the service was read ; the bell was tolled 
for the passing of the soul.) Read all of "Evangeline." 



430 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

THE SHIP OF STATE 

[These are the closing lines of "The Building of the Ship."] 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
With all the hopes of future years, 

5 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 

We know what Master laid thy keel, 
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 

io In what a forge and what a heat 

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock ; 
'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 

15 And not a rent made by the gale ! 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore, 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 

20 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

1807-1892 

In December of 1807. the same year in which Longfellow 
was born, another famous American poet also came into the 
world. He was the poet who wrote of country life, and the 
farm, and the winter snowstorm, and the cheerful fireside, 
and the barefoot boy. This is enough to tell you that it was 
Whittier. 

^ He was a Quaker, one of those quiet but earnest souls who 
live plainly, serve God, and talk only when they have some- 
thing to^say. You have read in your history how shamefully 
the Quakers were treated in the old New England days, 
but at the time that Whittier was born all thoughtful people 
respected them for their honest lives and their goodness. 

Whittier was born on a farm near Haverhill, Massachu- 
setts. The Whittier family were poor and had to work 
hard for a living. It is said that every day Greenleaf, as 
the boy was called, milked seven cows and took care of 
a yoke of oxen, a horse, and a flock of sheep. In winter he 
walked through the snow to the district school, where he 
picked up a knowledge of " reading, writing, and arithmetic." 
He often had to work beyond his strength, and his health was 
injured as a rc3ult of it, yet he was cheerful and contented, 
and found time for fun in the midst of his work. 

When young Whittier was about fourteen the school- 
master one evening brought over a book" of poems written 
by the Scotch poet Burns, who had also been a farmer's boy 
and who often thought out his poetry while plowing in the 

431 



432 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

field. Those poems of Burns stirred Whittier mightily. He 
borrowed the book and read them, and read them again, 
until he knew them, by heart. It seemed to him that he could 
be a poet too. He began to look for beautiful things in the 
rough life around him and to think beautiful thoughts, and 
he wrote verses somewhat similar to those of Burns. Several 
years later one of his sisters sent a few of these verses to the 
newspaper at Newburyport, a neighboring town, without his 
knowing anything about it, and one morning when he opened 
the paper and saw his rimes in print he was greatly excited. 

The editor of the paper was William Lloyd Garrison, 
afterward famous as an anti-slavery leader. Garrison came 
out to see the young poet and begged his father to send him 
to the academy in Haverhill. His father did not have the 
money to send him, but the boy was so anxious to go that he 
proposed to earn his own way, and did earn it for a time, 
by making slippers at eight cents a pair. But it took too 
long to make a little money at that rate, and there was not 
enough time left for study. Then, too, he felt that his father 
needed the help that he could give ; so after only two terms 
at the academy he left and went to work for a living. 

The Whittier homestead, where Greenleaf was born and 
reared, was at that time more than a hundred years old, 
having been built by his great-great-grandfather, when this 
part of Massachusetts was a wilderness, inhabited by only a 
few white settlers. It was a plain, substantial farmhouse 
with a large, low-ceiled living room and a great fireplace at 
one side. There the family gathered every evening after 
their work was done and there Greenleaf read by the light of 
the open fire the few books that the house afforded and some 
which he was able to borrow from the schoolmaster or from 
some wealthier neighbor. Sometimes stories were told and 
sports enjoyed, as described in "Snow-Bound." 

Through Garrison's influence Whittier secured a position 
on a paper in Boston, which paid him nine dollars a week, 



434 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

half of which he turned over to his father to assist in paying 
off the mortgage on the farm. He went from one paper to 
another, with occasional intervals when he returned to the 
farm to help his father or when his ill-health made it neces- 
sary for him to stop and rest. During these years he was 
more interested in politics than in poetry. He served one 
term as a member of the state legislature and was promi- 
nently mentioned as a candidate for Congress, but about that 
time he became interested in the anti-slavery movement and 
threw himself into it heart and soul, giving up all hope of 
political preferment. For years he shared the unpopularity 
that attached to this cause. At one time his newspaper 
office in Philadelphia was sacked and burned; on another 
occasion he was mobbed in the streets of Concord, New 
Hampshire, where he had been making an address. 

When the Civil War was over he retired from public life, 
gave up newspaper work, and returned to Amesbury, Massa- 
chusetts, where some years before, — upon his father's death, 
— he had bought a place for his mother and sister. There 
he lived the remainder of his life, at peace with the world, 
in a pleasant old home, and there he wrote most of his 
poems. "Snow-Bound," published in 1866, was his first 
great success, and it at once placed him among the foremost 
poets of America. The following year he published "The 
Tent on the Beach," a series of stories in verse, supposed to 
have been told by a group of friends who were camped on 
the seashore for a summer outing. Two years afterward 
came "Among the Hills." Other well-known poems of 
Whittier's, written at various times, are "The Barefoot Boy," 
"Mabel Martin," "Maud Muller," "In School Days," 
"Telling the Bees," "Barbara Frietchie," "The Huskers," 
and "Barclay of Ury." Neither Whittier nor his sister 
Elizabeth ever married. He died in the autumn of 1892, at 
the age of eighty- five. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 435 

SNOW-BOUND 

[This poem describes the old home near Haverhill, where Whittier 
was born and spent his boyhood. It shows how the life of a farmer's 
household may be transfigured by a poet's imagination. A true poet is 
a seer. He sees beauty in the common things of life and helps to open 
our eyes so that we too may see it. Whittier was influenced in this poem 
by Burns's "The Cotter's Saturday Night" and by Emerson's "The 
Snow Storm." The first nine lines of the last-named poem he placed 
at the head of "Snow-Bound," as his text. The following selection 
covers about the first third of "Snow-Bound."] 

The sun that brief December day- 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky , 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 
A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of lifeblood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snowstorm told. 
The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores — ■ 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's grass for the cows : 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
And sharply clashing horn on horn, 



15 



436 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
5 The cock his crested helmet bent 

And down his querulous challenge sent. 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 
10 And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow ; 

And ere the early bedtime came, 

The white drift piled the window frame, 
i 5 And through the glass the clothesline posts 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun ; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 
20 Of Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake and pellicle 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 
25 On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 
30 The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvelous shapes ; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corncrib stood, 

Or garden wall, or belt of wood ; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 437 

A smooth white mound the brush pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road ; 

The bridle post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat : 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 



A prompt, decisive man, no breath 

Our father wasted : "Boys, a path !" 10 

Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 

Count such a summons less than joy ?) 

Our buskins on our feet we drew ; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low 

To guard our necks and ears from snow, 15 

We cut the solid whiteness through. 

And where the drift was deepest, made 

A tunnel walled and overlaid 

With dazzling crystal : we had read 

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 20 

And to our own his name we gave, 

With many a wish the luck were ours 

To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

We reached the barn with merry din 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 25 

The old horse thrust his long head out 

And grave with wonder gazed about ; 

The cock his lusty greeting said, 

And forth his speckled harem led ; 

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 30 

And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 

The horned patriarch of the sheep, 

Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 



438 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before ; 
5 Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone \ 
No church bell lent its Christian tone 
To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

10 A solitude made more intense 

By dreary-voiced elements, 
The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
The moaning tree boughs swaying blind. 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

15 Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 

20 We minded that the sharpest ear 

The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And in our lonely life had grown 

25 To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west 
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
30 We piled with care our nightly stack 

Of wood against the chimney back — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout backstick ; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 439 

The knotty forestick laid apart 

And filled between with curious art 

The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 

We watched the first red blaze appear, 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 5 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 

Burst, flower like, into rosy bloom; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became, 10 

And through the bare-boughed lilac tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 

The crane and pendent trammels showed, 

The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed 

While childish fancy, prompt to tell 15 

The meaning of the miracle, 

Whispered the old rime : " Under the tree 

When fire outdoors burns merrily, 

There the witches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 20 

Shone at its full ; the hill range stood 

Transfigured in the silver flood, 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 

Took shadow, or the somber green 25 

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

Against the whiteness at their back. 

For such a world and such a night 

Most fitting that unwarming light, 

Which only seemed, where'er it fell, 30 

To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 



IO 



15 



440 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Content to let the north wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draft 
The great throat of the chimney laughed. 
The house dog, on his paws outspread, 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andirons' straddling feet 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved? 
20 What matter how the north wind raved? 

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth fire's ruddy glow. 
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 
How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother ! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will, 
The voices of that hearth are still ; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 



25 



30 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 441 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, 5 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust IO 

(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 15 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 20 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Whittier's life. 2. Explain the title "Snow- 
Bound." Where was this home? 3. Like " Evangeline" the poem 
presents a series of pictures. This selection contains eight. Find and 
name them. 4. Explain "darkly circled," "thickening sky," "a portent 
seeming less than threat," "sharpened face." 5. "The wind blew east" 
means blew from the east. What was the "strong pulse" of the ocean? 

6. Explain "stanchion rows," "walnut bows." (The older stanchion 
described here consisted of one upright bar, with a bow or yoke attached 
loosely to it, which encircled the cow's neck and could be moved up 
and down on the upright.) 7. Explain "scaffold's pole of birch." (In 
some barns the hay was supported on a scaffold of poles, over the stalls.) 
8. Explain " crested helmet," "querulous challenge." 

9. Define "spherule," "pellicle," "Nature's geometric signs," "hoary 



442 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

meteor," "firmament," "Pisa's leaning miracle." (The famous leaning 
tower at Pisa, Italy, is of white marble.) 10. What are "buskins"? 
ii. Note in "cut the solid whiteness" the .poetic form of using the name 
of a quality for the thing which possesses the quality. What word should 
you expect? 12. Explain the reference to Aladdin's cave and lamp. 
13. Compare the scene in the barn with the former scene in the same 
place. Which is the better? 14. Explain "speckled harem," "horned 
patriarch of the sheep," "Egypt's Amun." 15. What figure in "ghostly 
finger-tips of sleet" ? 

16. Explain "Burst, flowerlike, into rosy bloom." 17. Explain lines 
9-12, page 439. Why "mimic flame"? (Look out through a window- 
pane on a moonlight night when the room is lighted, and note the min- 
gling of the outdoor images and indoor reflections.) 18. Describe a 
crane and trammels. 

19. Note the picture of the moonlight on the snow, and tell how the 
hill range was "transfigured." 20. Why did the hemlocks seem "turned 
to pitchy black"? 21. Note the contrast between the fireside picture 
and the moonlight picture that preceded. Which do you like the better ? 
Why? 22. Explain "clean- winged." (A turkey wing was used to brush 
the hearth.) 23. Explain "beat the frost line back with tropic heat." 
24. Note the fine figure in "The great throat of the chimney laughed." 
What other examples of personification do you find in this fireside 
picture? 25. Why did the cat's silhouette look like a tiger's? 26. Define 
"meet" as used here. 

27. Note the change of feeling in line 23, page 440. The poet's sad- 
ness is explained by the fact that his sister Elizabeth had recently died. 
Compare these lines with the last stanza of "The Bells," which Poe 
wrote soon after his wife's death. What difference do you find, and 
what does it tell you of the two men? 28. To whom does the poet 
address his reverie in line 27? 29. Explain "But in the sun they cast 
no shade." (They are no longer flesh, but spirit.) 30. Explain "con- 
scious floor." Explain line 11, page 441. ("He" is the subject of "is 
just.") 31. Explain "who never sees the stars shine through his .cypress 
trees." (The cypress was formerly used in graveyards. He who looks 
through his cypress trees to the stars shows his hope in heaven.) The 
"breaking day" is the dawn of eternal life; the "mournful marbles" 
are tombstones. 32. In what sense is Life lord of Death? t,^. Why 
can Love never lose its own? 34. What lines in this selection do # you 
think the finest? Memorize them. 

Read the rest of " Snow-Bound, " or as much of it as you enjoy. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

i 809- i 894 

A slender, active little man with a cheery face, a twinkle 
in his eye, a smile about the corners of his mouth, fond of a 
joke, ready for a laugh, ever quick to do a kind deed — that 
was Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the town of 
Lowell and Longfellow, in an old-fashioned house near Har- 
vard University. The house has since been torn down, and 
the place is now part of the University grounds. Holmes's 
father, who was the minister of one of the village churches, 
kept in his desk each year a little almanac in which he 
made notes of various happenings ; and in his almanac for 
1809, which has been preserved all these years, may still 
be seen, opposite August twenty-ninth, the words, written 
in ink in the margin, "Son b." by which he meant that a son 
had been born to him on that date. The son happened to 
be Oliver Wendell. 

It was a quaint old yellow hip-roofed house that young 
Oliver was born in — almost a hundred years old at that 
time. It had been used after the battle of Lexington as a 
rallying place for the patriot soldiers and as headquarters 
for the American General Ward. Washington, too, and 
his staff, had been entertained there, and at another time 
it was used by the British troops. Oliver, when a boy, was 
greatly interested in certain dents in the floor of his father's 
library, which were said to have been made by the muskets 
of the British soldiers. 

443 



444 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

This library was a most attractive place to both Oliver 
and his brother John. It was a great heavy-beamed room 
with books reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the 
boys were allowed to play among the books long before 
they could read them. Then there was in the old house 
a garret where they liked to go, full of old chairs, tables, 
churns, andirons, traveling bags — almost everything that 
ever gets into . a garret? Holmes said that the chairs and 
tables looked as if they had been frightened and had climbed 
upon each other's backs to be out of danger. 

Then there was the closet where apples and peaches used 
to be stored away to ripen, with bundles of sweet-smelling 
herbs ; and there was the garden with its old lilac bushes 
and its pear and peach trees and sweet white grapes and its 
hyacinths and tulips and roses and hollyhocks. 

It was about a mile from the Holmes place to the school 
which Oliver attended, and "the way led through a thinly 
inhabited, woody, marshy, huckleberryish tract" where the 
boys had many adventures and sports. When Oliver was 
fifteen he went to Phillips Academy at Andover. His parents 
took him in the old family carriage and left him at the house 
of one of the professors. He was dreadfully homesick. 
" There was an ancient, faded old lady in the house," he 
says, "very kindly but very deaf. She comforted me, I well 
remember, but not with apples. She went and taking a 
blue and white soda powder, mingled the same in water and 
encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific 
for seasickness, but it was not for homesickness. The fizz 
was a mockery and it struck a colder chill to my heart. I 
did not disgrace myself, however, and a few days cured me." 

Oliver remained at Andover a year, and made many friends. 
He is described at this time as a lively youngster, full of fun 
and mischief. From Andover he went back to Cambridge 
and entered Harvard. One of his classmates at Harvard 
was Dr. Smith, who wrote the hymn "America." 



446 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

In a letter written at this time to one of his Andover school- 
mates he says: "I, Oliver Wendell Holmes, junior in 
Harvard University, am a plumeless biped of exactly five 
feet three inches when standing in a pair of substantial boots 
made by Mr. Russell of this town — having eyes which I 
call blue and hair which I do not know what to call." 

After leaving college young Holmes studied law for a 
year; then decided that he would rather be a physician 
than a lawyer, and so began the study of medicine. During 
these years of study he wrote "The Height of the Ridicu- 
lous," "The Specter Pig," "The Ballad of the Oyster-man," 
and other poems, which were printed in a college paper. 
During his first year as a medical student he wrote "Old 
Ironsides." 

After he had finished his medical course he went abroad 
and spent two or three years working in the hospitals of 
Europe. He then became a physician in Boston, and per- 
haps cured as many patients by his cheery visits and good 
humor as by his medicine. He was a professor in the Har- 
vard Medical School for thirty-five years, and the students 
loved him greatly. Often when he came into the recitation 
room they would greet him with a clapping of hands. 

In the autumn of 1857 the Atlantic Monthly was started 
in Boston. Lowell was its editor. Longfellow and Emerson 
and Holmes and several others agreed to write for it, but 
the most interesting thing about it was a series of talks or 
stories by Holmes, published each month and called "The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." They were supposed to 
give the conversation at the breakfast table of a Boston 
boarding house. This series was followed by two more, 
called "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" and "The 
Poet at the Breakfast Table." Years afterward a fourth 
series appeared, called "Over the Tea Cups." All four 
were published as books after having appeared in the 
magazine. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 447 

Holmes's best poems are perhaps "The Last Leaf," "The 
Chambered Nautilus," and "The Deacon's Masterpiece." 

OLD IRONSIDES 

[The United States frigate Constitution was nicknamed "Old Iron- 
sides" because of her strength and her ability to withstand storm and 
shot. She was built in 1797, took part in the bombardment of Tripoli 
in our war against the Mediterranean pirates in 1804, and distinguished 
herself in the War of 181 2 with England. Her greatest victory was 
over the British man-of-war, Guerriere, off the coast of Nova Scotia, 
August 19, 181 2, when, under command of Captain Isaac Hull, she 
destroyed the British vessel in less than half an hour. 

In 1828 the Navy Department decided that the Constitution was un- 
seaworthy and not worth repairing. Therefore orders were given to 
dismantle her. Holmes, then a student in Harvard Medical School, 
read the announcement in a newspaper, and was so indignant at the 
thought of putting the old ship to so disgraceful an end that he wrote 
this poem and sent it to one of the Boston papers. The poem was 
printed, was copied into other papers all over the country, and aroused 
such intense feeling that the Secretary of the Navy revoked the order, 
and the gallant old ship was kept at anchor in Charlestown Navy Yard 
Boston. Other attempts have since been made to dispose of the Con- 
stitution, but on each occasion so fierce a protest has arisen that the 
attempt has been abandoned.] 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky ; 
Beneath it rung the battle-shout, . . 

And burst the cannon's roar ; 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more ! 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 

Where knelt the vanquished foe, : 

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
And waves were white below, 



448 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
Or know the conquered knee ; 

The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
The eagle of the sea ! 

O better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave ; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale ! 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Tell what you can of the author of this poem. 2. Under what 
circumstances was it written, and what did it accomplish ? Give a brief 
history of the ship. 3. How is the first line to be understood? 4. Ex- 
plain "the meteor of the ocean air." 5. Notice how much stronger 
the verses become by making the ship seem to have life and feeling. 
What is this called ? 6. What are harpies ? Explain the metaphor of the 
harpies and the eagle. 7. Explain "her thunders," "her holy flag." What 
is the force of the world "nail" in line 9? 

8. What did the poet wish should be done to the Constitution? Should 
you rather see the ship suffer such an end, or the end which the Navy De- 
partment proposed? Give reasons. 9. Years afterward it was suggested 
that the Constitution should be used as a target for gun practice for the 
other ships of the navy. What should you think of that? 10. What 
is the advantage of keeping the ship on exhibition at the Navy Yard? 
What advantage is there in preserving any object that has had a promi- 
nent part in our nation's history? 

Additional readings : Roche's poem "The Constitution's Last Fight," 
Dwight's "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," Longfellow's "The 
Cumberland," Carryl's "When the Great Gray Ships Come In," Stanton's 
"The War Ship Dixie," Tennyson's "The Revenge," Southey's "Life 
of Nelson." 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 449 

THE LAST LEAF 

[Dr. Holmes says in a note to "The Last Leaf" in the authorized 
edition of his Complete Poems : 

This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our streets of a vener- . 
able relic of the Revolution, said to be one of the party who threw the tea over- 
board in Boston Harbor. He was a fine, monumental specimen, in his cocked 
hat and knee breeches, with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane. The smile 
with which I, as a young man, greeted him meant no disrespect to an honored 
fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date but whose patriotism never changed 
with years. 

The man was Major Thomas Melville. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, 
in his reminiscences, also speaks of having seen him. In reading the 
poem note how pathos and humor are mingled.] 

I saw him once before, 
As he passed by the door, 

And again 
The pavement stones resound, 
As he totters o'er the ground 5 

With his cane. 

They say that in his prime, 
Ere the pruning knife of Time 

Cut him down, 
Not a better man was found 10 

By the Crier on his round 

Through the town. 

But now he walks the streets, 
And he looks at all he meets 

Sad and wan, 15 

And he shakes his feeble head, 
That it seems as if he said, 

"They are gone." 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has prest 20 

In their bloom, 



450 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb. 

My grandmamma has said — 
S Poor old lady, she is dead 

Long ago — 
That he had a Roman nose, 
And his cheek was like a rose 

In the snow. 

10 But now his nose is thin, 

And it rests upon his chin 

Like a staff, 
And a crook is in his back, 
And a melancholy crack 

15 In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 
For me to sit and grin 

At him here ; 
But the old three-cornered hat, 
20 And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer ! 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring, 
2 5 Let them smile, as I do now, 

At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Note that this poem begins very simply, as if the poet were talking. 
He says this is the second time he has seen the old man. 2. What single 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 45 1 

verb in the first stanza gives you a picture of the man? 3. Explain the 
figure in "the pruning knife of Time cut him down." 4. Who was " the 
Crier," and what was his "round"? 5. Note that the third stanza 
is contrasted with the second. What touch of pathos do you find in 
the third stanza ? To whom does " they " refer, in line 18 ? 

6. Explain the fourth stanza. Where does Whittier use "marbles" 
in the same sense? 7. Explain "in their bloom." Note the pathetic 
beauty of this stanza. 8. What change of feeling is there in the fifth 
stanza, and what words indicate it? 9. Explain "cheek was like a rose 
in the snow." 10. Explain the spirit in which the poet smiles at the old 
man. What else does he feel behind the smile? 11. Find examples of 
humor in this poem ; examples of pathos. Do the two often go together ? 
Is it easy to pass from one to the other as Holmes does in this poem? 
12. Explain the metaphor in the title and in the last stanza. 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

[The chambered nautilus is a small marine animal found in the southern 
oceans. Its shell is from four to six inches in diameter and from without 
looks somewhat like a very large snail shell with an expanded mouth. 
Within, it is peculiar in being divided crosswise into a series of chambers, 
each larger than the one behind it. The animal at first occupies a very 
small shell. As it grows, it emerges and makes a partition behind it, 
leaving only a tiny hole in the center, through which runs a cord from 
its body. It now builds for itself a new shell covering. When it out- 
grows this second chamber, it advances again, making a new chamber, 
and so continues until it has completed its growth. The original 
shell is now only a small chamber in the very center. 

As the shells are sometimes found afloat, it was once supposed that 
the animal could sail and that it extended its tentacles to catch the breeze. 
This gave rise to the name nautilus, meaning a sailor. We have now 
learned, however, that it propels itself beneath the surface by taking 
in and ejecting the sea water. Floating shells are empty. 

The inside of the nautilus shell is coated with iridescent pearl. The 
poet, as he writes, is supposed to have an empty shell before him, which 
has been cut open to show the chambers. 

This poem appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, as part of "The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." Dr. Holmes thought it his best 
work.l 



452 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
5 In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
10 And every chambered cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed — ■ 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

15 Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil ; 
Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
20 Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 
25 From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Tnrough the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
30 As the swift seasons roll ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 453 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. From what book is this poem taken? 2. Explain the name 
"Chambered Nautilus." 3. Describe the growth of the nautilus. 

First stanza. The nautilus as described by the poets. 4. Explain 
"ship of pearl," "poets feign," "unshadowed main" (open sea), "purpled 
wings," "in gulfs enchanted" 5. What were the sirens? 6. Is there any 
significance in introducing coral reefs? (How are coral reefs made?) 
7. What are the "cold sea-maids"? 

Second stanza. The empty, broken shell. 8. Explain "webs of living 
gauze," "wrecked," "dreaming life," "irised ceiling" (give the derivation 
of "irised"), "sunless crypt." 9. Explain how the ceiling is rent and the 
crypt unsealed. (The shell cut in two is lying before the poet.) 

Third stanza. The life and growth of the nautilus. 10. Explain the 
first two lines. What was the "lustrous coil"? n. Note the beauty 
of the line "Stole with soft step its shining archway through." What 
is there in the words that helps to make it beautiful? 12. Explain 
"idle door." 13. Put into other words "knew the old no more." 

Fourth stanza. The nautilus brings a message. 14. What is the 
"heavenly message"? 15. Explain the figures in "cast from her lap, 
forlorn," "dead lips." 16. Explain the allusion to Triton and his horn. 
17. Whose voice is it that the poet seems to hear? 

Fifth stanza. The message. 18. Explain this stanza (the comparison 
between the nautilus and the human soul ; the growth of the soul ; its 
aspiration). 19. Explain "more stately mansions," "low-vaulted past," 
"each new temple," "shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast," 
"till thou at length art free." 20. What is symbolized by the "outgrown 
shell," "life's unresting sea " ? 21. Memorize the poem. 

Read Tennyson's "The Shell," Longfellow's "The Ladder of St. 
Augustine," also, from Holmes : " The Pilgrim's Vision," " The Deacon's 
Masterpiece," "Contentment," "The Boys," "Ode for Washington's 
Birthday," " Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle," " My Hunt 
after the Captain." 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 
1814-1877 

Between Prescott and Motley, the second of our great 
historians, was a gap of eighteen years. In some respects 
the two men were much alike. Both were Bostonians, of 
good family, well-to-do, and with every advantage of cul- 
tured homes and a thorough education. But while Pres- 
cott had to fight all his life to overcome the handicap of 
blindness, Motley found everything fitted to his hand. He 
might easily have spent his life in idleness, but he was not 
the sort of man to waste the opportunities that had been 
given to him. He worked hard and faithfully to make the 
most of himself and won a high place among our American 
authors. 

Motley was born in Dorchester, now a part of Boston, in 
1 8 14, the last year of our second war with England. As a 
boy he showed a manly spirit and a kind heart, and through- 
out his life was a perfect type of gentleman. He read books 
eagerly, but was particularly fond of the novels of Scott and 
Cooper. His preparation for college was gained at a private 
school in Northampton, Massachusetts, from which he 
entered Harvard at thirteen, already proficient in the lan- 
guages and with a school reputation as a writer and speaker. 
At Harvard he stood near the head of his class and at seventeen 
graduated with honor. He studied two years abroad ; then 
returned to Boston, where he took up the study of law, married 
at twenty-three, spent a year as a member of the Mas- 
sachusetts legislature, and at twenty-seven was appointed 
secretary to the American legation at St. Petersburg (now 

454 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 455 

Petrograd). On account of ill health he was soon obliged to 
return to this country, but as a result of his St. Petersburg 
experience he published a brilliant essay on " Peter the 
Great," which attracted wide attention and which decided him 
to devote his life to literature. It seemed that he had now 
found the work for which he was best fitted. 

He began his literary work with two novels, neither of 
which was successful. Then, becoming interested in the story 
of Holland and her struggle for liberty, he determined to 
write a book upon it, giving to it all the accuracy of history and 
at the same time the charm of vivid description and dramatic 
narrative. He now realized that his life work was marked 
out. For several years he studied and read all that he could 
find upon the history of the Netherlands ; then he began to 
write. When he had nearly finished his first volume he 
saw that he was not accomplishing what he set out to do. 
He felt that he had not reached the bottom of his subject and 
that he could not sit in his library in Boston and write satisfac- 
torily of a land so far away. So he took his family to Holland 
and spent several more years there and in neighboring Euro- 
pean countries, reading all the old books and manuscripts 
upon his subject that he could find in the great libraries. He 
acquired infinite patience — the first virtue of a historian. 
Having at last mastered his subject, he destroyed all that he 
had written, began again, and after ten years of labor com- 
pleted his first great work, "The Rise of the Dutch Republic." 
He could not find a publisher for it until he had agreed to pay 
the cost of publication ; then it was brought out and at once 
made him famous. 

Motley's second work was a continuation of the first. It 
was the "History of the United Netherlands," two volumes 
of which appeared in i860 and two more in 1868. While 
at work upon this book he was introduced to President 
Lincoln. Lincoln was pleased with his good sense, his charm- 
ing manners, his scholarship, and his brilliant conversation. 



456 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

"This is the type of man," said Lincoln, "who should rep- 
resent us abroad," and he made him minister to Austria. 
Motley was recalled by Johnson and a few years later 
was sent by Grant to London as our minister to England. 
Owing to some political disagreement he was later recalled 
from England, but not until he had made a brilliant record and 
a host of English friends. 

His last work, still a continuation of his former histories, 
was "The Life and Death of John of Barneveld," a history of 
the religious struggles of the Dutch. This was published in 
two volumes, in 1874. He planned a fourth book, which 
should trace the history of the Netherlands through the 
Thirty Years' War, but he did not live to carry out his plan. 



THE RELIEF OF LEYDEN 

[The following selection is from Motley's "The Rise of the Dutch 
Republic." The Netherlands in the sixteenth century occupied nearly 
the territory now covered by Holland and Belgium. When Philip the 
Second ascended the throne, they were but a part of his great realm, 
which included also Spain and a large portion of Italy. Philip lived in 
Spain and cared little for his Dutch subjects except to persecute them 
and to collect his revenues. His tyranny at length became so unbear- 
able that the Netherlands revolted, under the leadership of William 
Prince of Orange, called "the Silent." It was an unequal struggle, 
for the Spanish army was well-equipped and powerful, but the Dutch 
were fighting for liberty, and that gave them strength. Leyden, then 
one of the principal Dutch cities, had in 1574 been besieged for about a 
year by the Spaniards and had been starved almost to the point of 
surrender, when William conceived the idea of breaking down the dikes, 
flooding the country from the sea, and thus driving away the besiegers. 
With this done, he was ready to send across the submerged lands a fleet 
of small flat-bottomed boats carrying provisions and aid to the besieged 
city. The plans were well laid and partly carried out, when, owing to a 
sudden change in the wind, the sea was blown back, leaving a depth of 
only about nine inches over the fields, and stranding part of the Dutch 
relief boats, which needed nearly twice that depth of water to float them. 



458 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

The Spaniards, seeing their foes thus paralyzed, took possession of the 
dikes and roads surrounding Leyden and awaited developments. Admiral 
Boisot, the commander of the Dutch flotilla, was in despair, when sud- 
denly the wind again changed.] 



A violent equinoctial gale on the night between the first 
and second of October came storming from the northwest, 
shifting after a few hours fully eight points and then blowing 
still more violently from the southwest. The waters of the 

5 North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast 
of Holland and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean 
rising over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power 
across the ruined dikes. 

In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa 

10 instead of nine inches had more than two feet of water. No 
time was lost. The Kirkway, which had been broken through 
according to the Prince's instructions, was now completely 
overflowed, and the fleet sailed at midnight in the midst of the 
storm and darkness. A few sentinel vessels of the enemy 

15 challenged them as they steadily rowed toward Zoeterwoude. 
The answer was a flash from Boisot's cannon, lighting up the 
black waste of waters. There was a fierce naval midnight 
battle — a strange spectacle among the branches of those 
quiet orchards, and with the chimney stacks of half-sub- 

20 merged farmhouses rising around the contending vessels. 
The neighboring village of Zoeterwoude shook with the 
discharges of the Zeelanders' cannon, and the Spaniards 
assembled in that fortress knew that the rebel admiral was 
at last afloat and on his course. The enemy's vessels were 

25 spon sunk, their crews hurled into the waves. On went the 
fleet, sweeping over the broad waters which lay between 
Zoeterwoude and Zwieten. As they approached some 
shallows which led into the great mere, the Zeelanders dashed 
into the sea and with sheer strength shouldered every vessel 

3° through. Two obstacles lay still in their path — the forts of 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 459 

Zoeterwoude and Lammen, distant from the city five hundred 
and two hundred and fifty yards respectively. Strong re- 
doubts, both well supplied with troops and artillery, they were 
likely to give a rough reception to the light flotilla, but the 
panic which had hitherto driven their foes before the advancing 5 
patriots had reached Zoeterwoude. Hardly was the fleet in 
sight when the Spaniards, in the early morning, poured out 
from the fortress and fled precipitately to the left, along a 
road which led in a westerly direction towards The Hague. 
Their narrow path was rapidly vanishing in the waves, and IO 
hundreds sank beneath the constantly deepening and treacher- 
ous flood. The wild Zeelanders, too, sprang from their vessels 
upon the crumbling dike and drove their retreating foes into 
the sea. They hurled their harpoons at them with an accuracy 
acquired in many a polar chase ; they plunged into the waves I5 
in keen pursuit, attacking them with boat hook and dagger. 
The numbers who thus fell beneath these corsairs, who neither 
gave nor took quarter, were never counted, but probably not 
less than a thousand perished. The rest effected their escape 
to The Hague. 20 

The first fortress was thus seized, dismantled, set on fire, 
and passed, and a few strokes of the oars brought the whole 
fleet close to Lammen. This last obstacle rose formidable 
and frowning directly across their path. Swarming as it was 
with soldiers and bristling with artillery, it seemed to defy 25 
the armada either to carry it by storm or to pass under its 
guns into the city. It appeared that the enterprise was, after 
all, to founder within sight of the long-expecting and expected 
haven. Boisot anchored his fleet within a respectful distance 
and spent what remained of the day in carefully reconnoitering 30 
the fort, which seemed only too strong. In conjunction with 
Leyderdorp, the headquarters of Valdez, a mile and a half 
distant on the right, and within a mile of the city, it seemed so 
insuperable an impediment that Boisot wrote in despondent 
tone to the Prince of Orange. He announced his intention of 35 



460 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

carrying the fort, if it were possible, on the following morning, 
but if obliged to retreat, he observed, with something like 
despair, that there would be nothing for it but to wait for 
another gale of wind. 
5 Meantime the citizens had grown wild with expectation. A 
dove had been dispatched by Boisot informing them of his 
precise position, and a number of citizens accompanied the 
burgomaster, at nightfall, towards the tower of Hengist. 

"Yonder," cried the magistrate, stretching out his hand 

10 towards Lammen — " yonder, behind that fort, are bread 
and meat, and brethren in thousands. Shall all this be 
destroyed by the Spanish guns, or shall we rush to the rescue 
of our friends?" 

"We will tear the fortress to fragments with our teeth and 

15 nails," was the reply, "before the relief, so long expected, 
shall be wrested from us." 

It was resolved that a sortie, in conjunction with the opera- 
tions of Boisot, should be made against Lammen with the 
earliest dawn. 

20 Night descended upon the scene, a pitch-dark night, full 
of anxiety to the Spaniards, to the armada, to Leyden. 
Strange sights and sounds occurred at different moments to 
bewilder the anxious sentinels. A long procession of lights, 
issuing from the fort, was seen to flit across the black face of 

25 the waters in the dead of night, and the whole of the city wall 
between the Cow Gate and the Tower of Burgundy fell with a 
loud crash. The horror-struck citizens thought that the 
Spaniards were upon them at last; the Spaniards imagined 
the noise to indicate a desperate sortie of the citizens. Every- 

3° thing was vague and mysterious. 

Day dawned at length after the feverish night, and the 
admiral prepared for the assault. Within the fortress reigned 
a deathlike stillness, which inspired a sickening suspicion. 
Had the city, indeed, been carried in the night; had the 

35 massacre already commenced ; had all this labor and audacity 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 461 

been expended in vain ? Suddenly a man was descried wading 
breast-high through the water from Lammen towards the 
fleet, while at the same time a solitary boy was seen to wave 
his cap from the summit of the fort. After a moment of doubt 
the happy mystery was solved. The Spaniards had fled, panic- 5 
struck, during the darkness. Their position would still have 
enabled them, with firmness, to frustrate the enterprise of 
the patriots, but the hand of God, which sent the ocean and 
the tempest to the deliverance of Leyden, had struck her 
enemies with terror likewise. The lights which had been 10 
seen moving during the night were the lanterns of the retreat- 
ing Spaniards, and the boy, Gisbert Cornellisen, now waving 
his cap from the battlements, had alone witnessed the 
spectacle. So confident was he in the conclusion to which it 
led him that he had volunteered at daybreak to go thither 15 
all alone. The magistrates, fearing a trap, hesitated for a 
moment to believe the truth, which soon, however, became 
quite evident. Valdez, himself flying from Leyderdorp, had 
ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with all his troops from 
Lammen. Thus, the Spaniards had retreated at the very 20 
moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole 
side of the city for their entrance. The noise of the wall, as 
it fell, only inspired them with fresh alarm ; for they believed 
that the citizens had sallied forth in the darkness to aid the 
advancing flood in the work of destruction. All obstacles 25 
being now removed, the fleet of Boisot swept by Lammen and 
entered the city on the morning of the third of October. 
Leyden was relieved. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Motley's life. 2. Why was Leyden besieged? 
Tell what you can of the events which preceded the siege. 3. Who 
was the William of Orange mentioned in this story? (Distinguish be- 
tween this William, "the Silent," and the William of Orange who be- 
came king of England in 1689.) 4. Explain "equinoctial gale," "eight 



462 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

points." 5. What would be the effect of a strong wind blowing across 
the North Sea toward the coast of Holland? 6. Describe the cutting 
of the dikes. (It was not a single dike, but the series of dikes between 
Leyden and the sea.) Locate Leyden on a map. 

7. What was the Kirkway? (See Vocabulary.) ' 8. Who was 
Boisot ? 9. Note the vividness of this picture — the midnight en- 
counter, the flash of the cannon, "the black waste of waters," the battle 
among the tree tops. 10. Who were the Zeelanders? (Find Zeeland on 
your map.) 11. Who was the "rebel admiral," and why rebel? 
What were the "enemy's vessels" mentioned in line 24, page 458? 
12. Explain "great mere," "light flotilla," "corsairs," "armada." 

13. Locate The Hague. (The road probably ran west from Leyden and 
then southwest). 14. Explain the figure in "to founder," page 459, 
line 28. Explain "long-expecting and expected haven," " respectful 
distance." 15. How was the dove used to carry Boisot's message? 
16. Note the vividness of this second night picture. What was the 
"long procession of lights"? 17. What probably caused the fall of a 
portion of the city wall? 18. Who was Valdez? (See Vocabulary.) 
Locate Leyderdorp. 

Other readings from Motley : The Abdication of Charles V and the 
Fall of Antwerp, from "The Rise of the Dutch Republic" ; The Visit of 
Drake, from the "United Netherlands." 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

1817-1862 

Perhaps no one ever lived who was more truly a child of 
nature than Thoreau. He was a most interesting character 
— a natural, unspoiled man, who loved children and birds 
and trees and wild life, but who heartily disliked towns and 
society. 

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts*, in 181 7. His 
father had a small business as a maker of lead pencils, and 
Henry was brought up very simply. He was a thoughtful, 
serious boy, who always had a way of his own for doing things 
and who always did things well. He went to college at 
Harvard and graduated in 1837. Then he taught school for 
a time and was a private tutor in several families. For two 
years he lived with the Emersons, to whom he made himself 
useful in many ways. He also helped his father, the elder 
Thoreau, in his business and did odd jobs of surveying, 
gardening, carpentering, and anything else that came to his 
hand. It was hard for him to settle down to any regular 
work. He was not ambitious to make money or to gain fame, 
but wished only to have enough to live upon and time to 
study nature. 

In the summer of 1839 he and his brother John had made a 
boat and had paddled down the Concord River to its junction 
with the Merrimac, and up the Merrimac as far as they could 
go. From there they had tramped to the White Mountains 
and had returned the way they came. Thoreau had written 
in his journal a careful description of all that he saw on this 
journey, and as he thought more and more of the excursion, 

463 



464 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

it seemed to him that he had seen enough in the wild life of 
the woods and streams to give him material for a book. 

He wanted to live in the open air, he wanted to think 
and to write ; so in 1845 ne went out into the country by the 
shore of Walden Pond, near Concord — a mile from any 
neighbor — built himself a small hut, at an expense of twenty- 
eight dollars, and lived alone in it for more than two years. 
He supported himself by the labor of his hands, spent part 
of his time in writing the book which he had planned, "A 
Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and put into 
his journal the material for another book, which he published 
several years later, and which he called " Walden." 

After these two years in the open country he returned to 
town and lived, for another year with the Emersons. Then 
he went home to his father's house, supporting himself as 
before by various odd jobs, but chiefly by surveying, in which 
he was very skillful. He also continued his writing and gave 
lectures. He interested every one who heard him because of 
his fresh and original way of looking at things. 

At different times during these years Thoreau made three 
excursions to the woods of Maine, three walking journeys on 
Cape Cod, and a trip to Montreal and Quebec. He wrote 
accounts of these trips for the magazines, and after his death 
they were reprinted in book form, under the titles, ' ' The 
Maine Woods," "Cape Cod," and "A Yankee in Canada." 
Still later his complete Journal was published, in fourteen 
volumes. Thoreau died in 1862, after a long illness brought 
on by exposure and cold, for he took little care of his body. 

Emerson says of him : 

He knew the country like a fox or a bird and passed through 
it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the 
snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken this path 
before him. Under his arm he carried an old music book to press 
plants; in his pocket, hjs diary and pencil, a spyglass for birds, 
microscope, jackknife, and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, 



466 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

strong gray trousers to brave shrub oaks and smilax and to climb 
a tree for a hawk's or a squirrel's nest. He waded into the pool 
for water plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of 
his armor. . . . He was of short stature, firmly built, of light 
complexion, with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave aspect — 
his face covered in the late years with a becoming beard. His 
senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy, his hands strong 
and skillful in the use of tools. And there was a wonderful fitness 
of body and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately 
than another man could measure them with rod and chain. 



THE MAINE WOODS AND KATAHDIN 

[The following selection is from "The Maine Woods." Thoreau 
made this journey in August, 1846. He went with several companions 
by team from Bangor up the Penobscot River, about sixty miles, to Matta- 
wamkeag. Thence the party tramped some thirty miles up the West 
Branch of the Penobscot to Shad Pond, where they obtained a bateau, 
or flat-bottomed boat, and with the aid of two backwoodsmen paddled 
and poled up the river and through a chain of lakes to a point not far 
from the base of Mount Katahdin. Then, leaving the bateau, they 
continued the journey on foot up the slope of the mountain.] 

At length we reached an elevation sufficiently bare to 
afford a view of the summit, still distant and blue, almost as 
if retreating from us. A torrent was seen tumbling down 
in front. But this glimpse at our whereabouts was soon lost, 

5 and we were buried in the woods again. The wood was chiefly 
yellow birch, spruce, fir, mountain ash, and moosewood. It 
was the worst kind of traveling. Bunchberries were very 
abundant as well as Solomon's seal and mooseberries. Blue- 
berries were distributed along our whole route, and in one 

o place the bushes were dropping with the weight of the fruit, 
still as fresh as ever. Such patches afforded a grateful repast 
and served to bait the tired party forward. When any lagged 
behind, the cry of "blueberries" was most effectual to bring 
them up. Even at this elevation we passed through a moose 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 467 

yard, formed by a large flat rock, four or five rods square, 
where they tread down the snow in winter. At length, 
fearing that if we held the direct course to the summit we 
should not find any water near our camping ground, we 
gradually swerved to the west, till, at four o'clock, we struck 5 
again the torrent which I have mentioned, and here, in view 
of the summit, the weary party decided to camp that night. 

While my companions were seeking a suitable spot for this 
purpose, I improved the little daylight that was left in climb- 
ing the mountain alone. We were in a deep and narrow 10 
ravine, sloping up to the clouds at an angle of nearly forty- 
five degrees and hemmed in by walls of rock which were at 
first covered with low trees, then with impenetrable thickets 
of scraggy birches and spruce trees, and with moss, but at 
last bare of any vegetation but lichens, and almost continually 15 
draped in clouds. Following the course of the torrent, pulling 
myself up perpendicular falls of twenty or thirty feet by the 
roots of firs and birches, and then perhaps walking a level 
rod or two in the thin stream, — for it took up the whole 
road, ascending by huge steps, as it were, a giant's stairway, 20 
down which a river flowed , — I had soon cleared the trees and 
paused to look back over the country. The torrent was from 
fifteen to thirty feet wide, without a tributary, and seemingly 
not diminishing in breadth as I advanced ; but still it came 
rushing and roaring down, with a copious tide, over and amidst 25 
masses of bare rock, from the very clouds, as though a water- 
spout had just burst over the mountain. 

Leaving this at last, I began to work my way up the nearest 
peak, at first scrambling on all fours over the tops of ancient 
black spruce trees, from two to ten or twelve feet in height, 30 
their tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue and nipped 
with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased growing upward 
against the bleak sky. I walked some rods erect upon the 
tops of these trees, which were overgrown with moss and 
mountain cranberries. It seemed that in the course of time 35 



4 68 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

they had filled up the intervals between the huge rocks, and 
the cold wind had uniformly leveled all over. There was 
apparently a belt of this kind running quite round the moun- 
tain. Once, slumping through, I looked down ten feet, into a 

5 dark and cavernous region, and saw the stem of a spruce, on 
whose top I stood as on a mass of coarse basketwork, fully 
nine inches in diameter at the ground. These holes were 
bears' dens, and the bears were even then at home. This was 
the sort of garden I made my way over, certainly the most 

10 treacherous and porous country I ever traveled. But nothing 
could exceed the toughness of the twigs — not one snapped 
under my weight, for they had slowly grown. Having 
slumped, scrambled, rolled, bounced, and walked by turns 
over this scraggy country, I arrived upon a side-hill where 

i 5 gray, silent rocks were the flocks and herds that pastured. 
This brought me to the skirt of a cloud and bounded my walk 
that night. 

When I returned to my companions, they had selected a 
camping ground on the torrent's edge and were resting. It 

20 was savage and dreary scenery, so wildly rough that they 
looked long to find a level and open space for the tent. We 
could not well camp higher for want of fuel; and the trees 
here seemed so evergreen and sappy that we almost doubted 
if they would acknowledge the influence of fire ; but fire 

25 prevailed at last. Some more aerial and finer-spirited winds 
rushed and roared through the ravine all night, from time to 
time arousing our fire and dispersing the embers about. It 
was as if we lay in the very nest of a young whirlwind. At 
midnight one of my bedfellows, being startled in his dreams 

30 by the sudden blazing up to its top of a fir tree, whose green 
boughs were dried by the heat, sprang up with a cry from 
his bed, thinking the world on fire, and drew the whole camp 
after him. 

In the morning, after whetting our appetite on some raw 

35 pork, a wafer of hard-bread, and a dipper of condensed cloud 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 469 

or waterspout, we began to make our way up the falls ; this 
time choosing the highest peak, which was not the one I had 
approached before. But soon my companions were lost to my 
sight behind the mountain ridge in my rear, and I climbed 
alone over huge rocks, loosely poised, a mile or more, still 5 
edging toward the clouds ; for though the day was clear else- 
where, the summit was concealed by mist. The mountain 
seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had 
rained rocks and they lay as they fell, nowhere fairly at rest, 
but leaning on each other with cavities between. They were 10 
the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, 
which the vast chemistry of nature would anon work up into 
the smiling and verdant plains and valleys of earth. 

At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which 
seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never 15 
be gone, but was generated out of that pure air as fast as it 
flowed away. When I reached the summit of the ridge, which 
those who have seen it in clearer weather say is about five 
miles long and contains a thousand acres of table-land, I was 
deep within the hostile ranks of clouds, and all objects were 20 
obscured by them. Now the wind would blow me out a yard 
of sunlight, wherein I stood ; then a gray, dawning light was 
all it could accomplish, the cloud-line ever rising and falling 
with the wind's intensity. Sometimes it seemed as if the 
summit would be cleared in a few moments and smile in sun- 25 
shine; but what was gained on one side was lost on another. 
It was like sitting in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to 
blow away. It was, in fact, a cloud-factory. Occasionally, 
when the windy columns broke in to me, I caught sight of a 
dark, damp crag to the right or left ; the mist driving cease- 30 
lessly between it and me. 

At length, fearing that my companions would be anxious to 
reach the river before night, and knowing that the clouds 
might rest on the mountain for days, I was compelled to 
descend. Occasionally, as I came down, the wind would blow 35 



470 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

a vista open, through which I could see the country eastward, 
boundless forests and lakes and streams, gleaming in the sun. 
Now and then some small bird of the sparrow family would 
flit away before me, unable to command its course, like a 
5 fragment of the gray rock blown off by the wind. 

I found my companions where I had left them, gathering 
the mountain cranberries, which filled every crevice between 
the rocks, together with blueberries, which had a spicier flavor 
the higher up they grew. From this elevation, just on the 

10 skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west 
and south, for a hundred miles — immeasurable forest — no 
clearing, no house ! It did not look as if a solitary traveler 
had cut so much as a walking stick there. Countless lakes — 
Moosehead in the southwest, forty miles long by ten wide; 

15 Chesuncook, eighteen long by three wide; and a hundred 
others ; and mountains, also, whose names, for the most part, 
are known only to the Indians. The forest looked like a 
firm grass sward, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has 
been well compared to that of a " mirror broken into a thou- 

20 sand fragments and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting 
the full blaze of the sun." 

Setting out on our return to the river, still at an early hour 
in the day, we decided to follow the course of the torrent as 
long as it would not lead us too far out of our way. We 

25 thus traveled about four miles in the very torrent itself, con- 
tinually crossing and recrossing it, leaping from rock to rock 
and jumping with the stream down falls of seven or eight 
feet, or sometimes sliding down on our backs in a thin sheet 
of water. This ravine had been the scene of an extraordinary 

30 freshet in the spring, apparently accompanied by a slide from 
the mountain. For a rod or two, on either side of its channel, 
the trees were barked and splintered up to their tops, the 
birches bent over, twisted and sometimes finely split, like a 
stable-broom ; some, a foot in diameter, snapped off, and whole 

35 clumps of trees bent over with the weight of rocks piled on 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 471 

them. In one place we noticed a rock two or three feet in 
diameter lodged nearly twenty feet high in the crotch of a tree. 

After leaving the torrent, being in doubt about our course, 
Tom threw down his pack at the foot of the loftiest spruce 
tree at hand, and shinned up the bare trunk some twenty feet, 5 
and then climbed through the green tower. 

He descried a little meadow and pond, lying probably in our 
course, which we concluded to steer for. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell what you know of the life of Thoreau. 2. Point out on a map 
Thoreau's route from Bangor to Mount Katahdin. 3. What is an angle 
of forty-five degrees? Draw one. 4. Why do trees become stunted on 
the higher slopes of a mountain and at length disappear? 5. Why is it 
cold on a high mountain? 6. Explain how Thoreau could have walked 
over the tops of the trees. 7. Explain "where gray, silent rocks were 
the flocks and herds that pastured." 8. Express in simpler words "skirt 
of a cloud," "acknowledge the influence of fire," "aerial and finer-spiri- 
ted winds," "dispersing the embers." Explain "nest of a young whirl- 
wind." 9. What expressions on page 468 make the wind seem like a 
living thing ? What does this add to the picture ? 

10. Explain "whetting our appetite," "a dipper of condensed cloud 
or waterspout," "the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen 
quarry." 11. Explain how the "chemistry of nature" changes rocks into 
earth. 12. How was the cloud "generated out of that pure air as fast as 
it flowed away"? Why do clouds hang about the tops of mountains? 
13. Why are the clouds said to be in "hostile ranks"? 14. Explain 
"Now the wind would blow me out a yard of sunlight." 15. Why is 
the mountain called a "cloud-factory"? 16. If you have ever been in 
a cloud, describe how it seemed to you; if you have not, give Tho- 
reau's description in your own words. 

The first two excursions described in "The Maine Woods" have been 
somewhat abridged by Clifton Johnson and published as "Katahdin 
and Chesuncook" in the Riverside Literature Series. The book is well 
fitted to this grade and will give you a better acquaintance with Thoreau. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

1819-1891 

James Russell Lowell was born on Washington's Birth- 
day in the year 18 19, in a fine old house in Cambridge, which 
was called Elmwood because of the great elm trees that stood 
about it. He developed into a bright, good-natured boy,, 
full of fun, and was never so happy as when out in the woods, 
or beside the river, or in the meadows among the long grass 
and wild flowers. What he liked next best to being out of 
doors was to get a book and curl up in a chair in the corner 
of his father's study, for his father was a minister and had 
a large library. There he would find some fine old story like 
"Pilgrim's Progress" or "Robinson Crusoe" or the "Ara- 
bian Nights," and would become so interested in it that he 
would sometimes forget his supper, until his mother would 
come and find him. 

Every spring the side of the road in front of the house was 
yellow with dandelions, and he greatly loved them. He 
says in his poem, "To the Dandelion" : 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 
With news from heaven, which he could bring 

Fresh every day to my untainted ears 

When birds and flowers were happy peers. 
•472 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 473 

The first school to which young Lowell went was a private 
school kept by one of the neighbors. When he was about 
nine he was sent to a larger school and had to study French 
and Latin. The schoolmaster was a severe man, and kept 
a rattan stick in his desk with which to whip the boys. At 
about this time James wrote two letters to his brother, which 
have been saved through all these years. In them he tells 
about this rattan stick and about the hut that he and his 
brother had built, and how he and the colt and the dog went 
to town. He says that the kitten is as well and as playful 
as ever, and that he, James, is going to have a new suit, and 
that his mother says he may have any sort of buttons on it 
that he wishes. It is just such a letter as any boy of nine 
might write, and is not spelled exactly according to the dic- 
tionary. But he learned to spell, as he learned to do many 
other things, by keeping at it. 

In the winter he loved to skate, and many a morning he 
might be seen, as soon as it was light, skimming over the 
ice upon the river, or on Fresh Pond, which was only a short 
walk from his home. He tells us how on the first winter 
days he could hardly wait for the ice to get thick enough to 
bear him, and he would spend the evening, until bedtime, 
beside the fire, putting on and taking off his new skates 
twenty times and trying each buckle and strap to see if it 
was right. He was a strong, manly boy and liked all kinds 
of outdoor sports. Throughout his life he was fond of tak- 
ing long tramps over the snow in winter, especially on 
nights when the moon was up and the air was clear and crisp 
and cold. 

Lowell entered college at Harvard when he was only 
fifteen. During his college course, Longfellow, then only 
twenty-nine, came to Harvard from Bowdoin and became pro- 
fessor of modern languages. Lowell was in one of his classes, 
and thus the two became acquainted. Lowell read widely 
while at college and showed a strong interest in literature. 



474 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

though he did not distinguish himself as a scholar. In his 
senior year he was one of the editors of the college magazine 
and was elected class poet. 

After his graduation he studied law, but did not like it. 
It seemed to him that he was born to write and that he must 
write. At about this time he married a very talented and 
lovely young woman, who was herself a poet and who in- 
spired him to do his best. 

They lived in the old home, " Elm wood," and there Lowell's 
happiest years were spent. He gave himself up entirely to 
his work, and Mrs. Lowell helped him with her counsel, 
sympathy, and love. Children came to them and brightened 
the old house, but neither Mrs. Lowell nor the children had 
robust health. Their first little daughter, Blanche, died when 
she was a year old. This was the loss to which Lowell refers 
in his poem, "The, First Snowfall." Sometime afterwards 
Mrs. Lowell's health began to fail, and Lowell, thinking 
that a trip abroad might benefit her, went with her to Europe, 
where they lived and traveled for a year. But she was 
no better, and about a year after their return to Elmwood, 
she died. 

Longfellow was then living at the old Craigie house and 
was a near neighbor of the Lowells. The two families were 
much together. On the night that Mrs. Lowell died, a 
child was born in the Longfellow home, and Longfellow 
wrote that exquisite poem of sympathy, "The Two Angels," 
beginning : 

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death 
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke. 

A little more than a year after this, Longfellow resigned his 
professorship at Harvard, and Lowell was chosen to take 
his place. Soon afterwards Lowell was also made editor of 
the Atlantic Monthly. During all this time he spent his 
spare moments writing poetry, much of which was published 



476 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

in magazines and afterwards in book form. "The Vision of 
Sir Launfal" and "The Biglow Papers" were among the most 
famous of them. 

When he was about fifty-eight the United States govern- 
ment sent him to Spain, and three years later to England, as 
our ambassador. He lived in Spain three years and in England 
five years and made many friends both for himself and for the 
nation. Then he came back to his old home in Cambridge, 
where he died in 1891. 

Besides his poems he wrote many essays and prepared a 
number of addresses for special occasions. He was a pleasing 
speaker, a fine scholar, and a noble man. 



TWO SCENES FROM "SIR LAUNFAL" 

["The Vision of Sir Launfal" is a dream which Lowell imagines came 
to a young knight. It was in June. All nature stimulated one to be 
abroad and to be doing something, and Sir Launfal determined to set 
forth on a quest for the Holy Grail. In the midst of his preparations 
he had this vision : 

It seemed that as he was passing out of the castle he saw at the gate 
a leper asking for alms. He looked at the poor man in disgust, threw 
him a piece of gold, and passed on. 

Sir Launfal sought in vain for the Grail. He came back in his 
old age, weary and disappointed ; found his castle occupied and was 
driven from the gate. The leper was still there. No longer proud, 
Sir Launfal now sat down, divided with the man his last crust, and 
gave him water from a wooden bowl. Then the leper arose and in 
his place stood Jesus, saying, "Here is the Grail — this cup, which 
thou didst fill for me." Sir Launfal had found the Grail — at his own 
castle gate — because he had treated the poorest of mankind as a friend 
and brother. 

The two following selections are preludes to the two parts of the 
poem. The first, describing a day in June, gives the feeling of youth 
and joy and introduces the scene in which Sir Launfal sets forth on his 
journey ; the second, describing winter, represents age and sorrow and 
precedes the scene of Sir Launfal's return.] 



• JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 477 

I — A DAY IN JUNE 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays ; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 5 

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; 10 

The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 15 

To be some happy creature's palace ; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 20 

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? 

Now is the high tide of the year, \ 25 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it ; 30 

No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green ; 



478 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 
5 The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by ; 

10 And if the breeze kept the good news back 
For other couriers we should not lack ; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

15 Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving ; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
20 As for grass to be green or skies to be blue — 

'T is the natural way of living : 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 
25 The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 

The soul partakes of the season's youth, 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 479 

II — WINTER 

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old ; 

On open wold and hilltop bleak 
It had gathered all the cold 

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek ; 5 

It carried a shiver everywhere 

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; 

The little brook hea.rd it and built a roof 

'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof ; 

All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 10 

He groined his arches and matched his beams ; 

Slender and clear were his crystal spars 

As the lashes of light that trim the stars ; 

He sculptured every summer delight 

In his halls and chambers out of sight ; 15 

Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 

Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 

Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees 

Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; 

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 20 

But silvery mosses that downward grew ; 

Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 

With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf ; 

Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here 25 

He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 

And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 

That cry staled the beams of moon and sun, 

And made a star of every one : 

No mortal builder's most rare device 30 

Could match this winter palace of ice ; 

'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 

In his depths serene through the summer day, 



480 NINETEENTH CENTURY —AMERICAN 

Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 
Lest the happy model should be lost, 

Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
By the elfin builders of the frost. 

5 Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly ; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
10 Wallows the Yule log's roaring tide ; 

The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind ; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 
Hunted to death in its galleries blind ; 
15 And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 
Like herds of startled deer. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
20 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
25 Whose burden still, as he might guess. 

Was " Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 
The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
30 The great hall fire, so cheery and bold. 

Through the window slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 481 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Lowell's life. 2. Tell the story of "Sir Laun- 
fal." 3. Why is the description of a June day used as the prelude to 
the first part? 4. Define "rare" as here used. 5. Explain the -fig- 
ure in "tries earth if it be in tune" (the violinist bending his ear over 
his instrument). 6. What are some of the signs of life that we see or 
hear in June? Note that even the clod is here personified. Explain 
this metaphor. 7. Explain and note the appropriateness of the figures 
"catches the sun in its chalice," "to be some happy creature's palace," 
"atilt like a blossom," "illumined being," "deluge of summer," "heart 
in her dumb breast flutters and sings." 

8. Note the correct use of "nice" in line 24, page 477. Substitute 
another word for it. Is your word as good? 9. Explain the figure 
in " high tide of the year." What other words carry out the same figure ? 
Note the sense of fullness and largeness. 10. What effect has a beauti- 
ful day upon the feelings? In what lines is this expressed? 11. What 
do the clouds symbolize (line 21, page 478)? 12. Explain "unscarred 
heaven," "sulphurous rifts." (The crater of a volcano is, scarred with 
cracks or rifts, through which melted sulphur bubbles.) 

13. Why is a winter scene introduced as the prelude to the description 
of Sir Launfal's return? 14. Why is the snow on the mountain peak 
called "five thousand summers old"? Why not winters? Define 
"wold." 15. Note the beauty of this description of the brook in 
winter and compare it with the June day. Which do you like the better ? 
Why? Compare this brook with the brook in "Snow-Bound." 16. De- 
scribe the roof which the brook built. Explain "groined his arches and 
matched his beams." 17. Describe the "crystal spars" as you have 
seen them in partly frozen water. 

18. Is the simile in lines 12, 13, page 479, a good one? Give reasons. 
19. Explain line 14. Note the effect of the word "tinkling." 20. Ex- 
plain "frost-leaved forest-crypt," "long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed 
trees." (Note that the grasses are caught and imprisoned in the ice. 
Note, too, that the poet is describing a scene in miniature.) 21. Ex- 
plain "bending to counterfeit a breeze." (What would the current of 
the brook do to the grasses before they were frozen?) 22. Explain 
"fretwork," "arabesques of ice-fern leaf." 23. Explain the figure 
beginning in line 32, page 479. Is it a metaphor or a simile? 

24. What is there to relieve the coldness of the winter picture ? Note 
how Whittier in "Snow-Bound" employs the same contrast. What 



482 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

does the thought of Christmas add to this picture? Define "corbel," 
"rafter." Explain "sprouting," "Yule log." 25. Note the figure in 
"flame-pennons." What other words carry out the same idea? Ex- 
plain the figure in lines 13, 14, page 480 ; in lines 1 5-18. Note the wealth 
of figurative language throughout this poem. 26. Discuss the figure 
in line 20. 27. Notice the comparison of the seneschal's voice to a 
flaring torch. What does that mean to you? 

28. What effect does the sight of the bright castle windows have 
upon Sir Launfal? 29. Explain the last four lines. 30. Think of these 
two selections as contrasted pictures. Which has the more beauty? 
Which has the more thought? 31. Find examples of alliteration; of 
the use of words expressing the sound which they represent. 32. Mem- 
orize from the beginning to line 15, page 478; line 1, page 479, to line 4, 
page 480. 

Read the entire poem; also "The Heritage," "The Dandelion," and 
"The Shepherd of King Admetus." 



O BEAUTIFUL! MY COUNTRY! 

[From the Commemoration Ode, read at Harvard University in 1865, 
in honor of the students who had fallen in the Civil War.] 

O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 

And letting thy set lips, 

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 

What were our lives without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee ; 

We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! 



WALT WHITMAN 

1819-1892 

It was in a little frame house just off the highway, near 
Huntington, Long Island, that Whitman was born, in 1819. 
His father was a carpenter — a strong man and a good work- 
man, but not very prosperous. His mother was of Dutch 
descent, good-natured, simple, and domestic. Walt was the 
second child. He is said to have been a sturdy, fair-skinned 
youngster, with hair as black as coal, and with wide blue- 
gray eyes that were always looking at something. He loved 
birds and flowers. In his poem about himself he says : 

The early lilacs became part of this child, 

And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red 
clover, 
And the song of the phcebe-bird. 

When he was but four years old the family moved to 
Brooklyn and lived in various unattractive houses, seldom 
staying long in one place. Walt seems to have spent most 
of his earlier years wandering away from town and roaming 
through the woods and meadows, often taking long jaunts 
along the ocean side, digging clams in summer, and spearing 
eels in winter, through the ice. 

He went to school irregularly until he was thirteen ; then 
"went to work." He found a job as errand boy. His em- 
ployer gave him a ticket to a circulating library, and there 
he made practically his first acquaintance with literature, 
reading with great delight "The Arabian Nights" and all 

483 



484 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Scott's novels. At fifteen he was setting type in a news- 
paper office ; at eighteen he was teaching school at Flushing ; 
at twenty he had started a small weekly paper at Hunting- 
ton, his native village, serving as editor, compositor, press- 
man, and delivery boy. 

The paper gave him experience but not much else. After 
a year or two he secured a position as editor of a small daily 
in New York, writing at the same time stories and sketches 
for a literary journal called The Democratic Review, which 
included among its contributors Poe, Bryant, Hawthorne, 
Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell. From New York he went 
South, edited a paper in New Orleans for a time, and returned 
by way of the Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and Canada. 

The year 1855 saw the publication of his first book, " Leaves 
of. Grass," a poem, or group of poems, different from any 
poetry that had then been written. Not being able to find 
a publisher, he set up the type himself and printed it in a job 
office in Brooklyn. Some said it was not poetry at all ; others 
said there were grains of poetry in it, bu t it was mostly prose 
in verse form ; still others could make nothing of it. Emerson 
praised it for its freedom ; Whittier threw his copy into the 
fire. The book did not sell, and except by a very few in- 
dependent thinkers, Whitman was regarded as a joke. 

In 1 86 1 the Civil War came on. Whitman's brother 
George was one of the first to enlist. Then came news that 
George was wounded on one of the Virginia battle fields. 
Walt went to the front and found his brother convalescent, 
but was inexpressibly touched at the sight of the thousands 
who were dying in the hospitals for want of proper care. 
Here seemed to him a clear duty ; here was a chance to serve 
his country by saving rather than by taking life. He stayed 
in Washington as a volunteer nurse, without pay, supporting 
himself by copying government papers a few hours a day, 
living in the attic of a shabby tenement, and saving every 
cent he could to buy fruit and delicacies for the wounded. 



486 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

The doctors told him he was overworking, but he laughed at 
them. Yet, after about a year of this constant strain, his 
health broke down, and he was never again a well man. 

Having obtained a small clerkship in one of the govern- 
ment offices, he remained in Washington for more than ten 
years, employing his leisure in writing. His second book of 
poems, "Drum Taps," and his essay " Democratic Vistas," 
belong to this period. He had good friends around him — 
one of whom was John Burroughs, then also a government 
clerk — but the public did not understand him and fame 
came slowly. 

One night, after he had been reading late, he was stricken 
with paralysis. The attack was not severe, and he rallied 
from it, but it was clear that his active life was over. He 
went to Camden, New Jersey, just across the river from Phila- 
delphia, where his mother and his brother George were living, 
and there, in the old sailors' phrase, he "laid up," for the 
rest of his life, a period which stretched out into nearly twenty 
years. A few summers in the country helped him partially to 
regain his strength. Then, wishing to be independent, he 
bought a home with the small income from his books. It was 
an ugly house, on an ugly street, with locomotives puffing and 
freight trains rumbling a block away, and the houses crowded 
forward to the sidewalks as if they were afraid a little grass 
might grow between. 

But Whitman was as contented as if he were living in a 
palace. His fame had been growing, he was beginning to 
be understood, and now some of the best and wisest men of 
the times came to visit him. They came because they felt 
that this great, simple, independent man had something to 
tell them that others did not know. In a talk with one of 
his visitors he said, "I like the folks, the plain, ignorant, un- 
pretentious folks . . . and I like the babies, and I like the 
youngsters that play in the alley and make mud pies on 
my steps." 



WALT WHITMAN 487 

That was Walt Whitman. He liked the folks, and he put 
on no style. He was an honest, true-hearted man. 

O .CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

[This poem was written just after the assassination of Lincoln. The 
poet thinks of the Union as the "Ship of State," that has weathered the 
war but lost its captain.] 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done ; 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is 

won; 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring ; 
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 5 

O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead ! 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ! 

Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, 10 

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores 

a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ; 
Here, Captain ! dear father ! 

This arm beneath your head ! 
It is some dream that on the deck I5 

You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won ; 2 o 
Exult, shores, and ring, bells ! 

But I, with mournful tread, 
Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 



488 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give a sketch of Whitman's life. 2. What was this poem written 
to commemorate? What is referred to in "Captain," "fearful trip," 
"the ship," "weathered every rack"? What was the "prize" that had 
been won ? What is the natural order of words in " follow eyes the steady 
keel"? 3. In the line "O heart! heart! heart!" what is expressed? 
Could it have been so well expressed by any statement of fact ? 

4. Note in the second stanza the fine picture of a rejoicing multitude. 
For whom do they call, and why? 5. Why is the form of address 
changed from "Captain" to "father"? 6. Explain "It is some dream." 
7. Why should the shores exult and the bells ring? 8. What lines show 
to you most keenly the poet's personal grief? 9. Memorize the poem. 

Other tributes to Lincoln are the addresses by Beecher, Lowell, and 
Ingersoll, and poems by Bryant, Maurice Thompson, Tom Taylor, 
Stedman, S. Weir Mitchell, Sill, Markham, Stoddard, Piatt, and Brownell, 
also Lowell's reference in the "Commemoration Ode." 



THE BIRD SONG 

[This selection, from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," is an 
example of Whitman's verse at its best. It has no rime nor regularity, yet 
there is unmistakable rhythm and musical cadence. The freedom from 
all regular poetic form has given to it the name "free verse." Note 
the vivid pictures and the beauty and pathos of it. It is a poem for 
every lover of birds and nature.] 

When the lilac scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass 
was growing, 

Up this seashore in some briers, 

Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together, 

And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown, 
5 And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, 

And every day the she-bird crouched on her nest, silent, 
with bright eyes, 

And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never dis- 
turbing them, 

Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. 



WALT WHITMAN 489 

Shine ! shine ! shine ! 

Pour down your warmth, great sun ! 

While we bask, we two together. 

Two together ! 

Winds blow south, or winds blow north, 5 

Day come white, or night come black, 

Home, or rivers and mountains from home, 

Singing all time, minding no time, 

While we two keep together. 

Till of a sudden, 10 

Maybe killed, unknown to her mates, 

One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, 

Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, 

Nor ever appeared again. 

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, 15 

And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather, 

Over the hoarse surging of the sea, 

Or flitting from brier to brier by day, 

I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird, 

The solitary guest from Alabama. 20 

Blow ! blow ! blow ! 

Blow up sea winds along Paumanok's shore ; 

I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me. 

Yes, when the stars glistened, 

All night long on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake, 25 

Down almost amid the slapping waves, 

Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears. 

He called on his mate, 

He poured forth the meanings which I of all men know. 
Forth more than once dimly down to the beach gliding, 30 

Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the 
shadows, 



490 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and 

sights after their sorts, 
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, 
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, 
Listened long and long. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Tell in your own words the story in this selection. 2. What 
can you say of the verse? 3. Have you ever seen any other examples 
of "free verse"? If so, where? 4. Explain " Fifth-month." 5. Mem- 
orize the bird's song. ("Home, or rivers and mountains from home," 
means that it doesn't matter whether we are at home, or whether 
rivers and mountains lie between us and home, so long as we two are 
together.) 

6. What lines are included in the second song of the bird? Explain 
"Paumanok." (See Vocabulary.) 7. What ' feelings are expressed in 
the two songs of the bird? 8. Why did Whitman, of all men, know 
the meaning of the bird's song? 9. Explain the figure "The white 
arms out in the breakers." 10. What do you learn from this poem 
regarding Whitman's childhood? 

Other readings from Whitman : "Pioneers," "Night on the Prairies," 
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," "An Old Man's Thought 
of School," "I Hear America Singing," "On the Beach at Night," and 
"A Noiseless, Patient Spider." 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 

1822-1909 

Dr. Edward Everett Hale was one of the most distinguished 
and capable Americans of his generation. He was of the same 
stock as Nathan Hale the patriot spy, and was born in Boston 
in 1822, — the son of a well-known newspaper editor. The 
boy grew up in his native city, surrounded by books and all 
the advantages of a cultured home. He distinguished him- 
self as a scholar and after completing the course at the Boston 
Latin School entered Harvard and graduated with honor at 
the age of seventeen. He had a strong leaning toward his 
father's profession of journalism, and a desire to write, but 
he felt that he could perhaps do more good as a preacher. He 
therefore studied theology — teaching meanwhile in the 
Boston Latin School — and at twenty was licensed to preach. 
After a varied experience of some ten years, he became minister 
of a large church in Boston and remained there during the 
rest of his long life, though he gave much of his time to writing 
and editing. His name appears as the author or editor of 
more than fifty books. He was also prominently connected 
with important reforms and philanthropic work of many 
kinds, and for a time was Congressional chaplain in Washing- 
ton. The best known of his original works are the stories, 
"The Man Without a Country," "In His Name," and "My 
Double and How He Undid Me." He originated the well- 
known motto, "Look up and not down; look forward and 
not back ; look out and not in ; and lend a hand." 

491 



492 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

PHILIP NOLAN ACTS AS INTERPRETER 

[According to Dr. Hale's story, which, as he repeatedly asserted, had 
no historical foundation, Philip Nolan was a young naval officer who 
was court-martialed for some supposed connection with Burr's plots in 
1807. In a rage at the court Nolan cursed the United States, declaring 
that he wished he might never hear the name again. The court decreed 
that his wish should be gratified. He was transferred to an outward- 
bound man-of-war, and when the ship was about to return, he was 
transferred to another vessel bound for foreign ports. This practice 
was continued throughout Nolan's life. He was not only never allowed 
to go home but was never allowed to receive news from home, and was 
not even permitted to read a book or newspaper in which the name of 
the United States was mentioned. One incident of his punishment is 
described in the following extract.] 

I first came to understand anything about the "man 
without a country" one day when we overhauled a dirty 
little schooner which had slaves on board. An officer was 
sent to take charge of her, and after a few minutes he sent 

5 back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him who 
could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail 
when the message came, and we all wished we could interpret, 
when the captain asked who spoke Portuguese. But none 
of the officers did ; and just as the captain was sending for- 

10 ward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out and 
said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as 
he understood the language. The captain thanked him, 
fitted out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my 
luck to go. 

15 When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom 
see, and never want to. Nastiness beyond account and 
chaos run loose in the midst of the nastiness. There were 
not a great many of the negroes; but by way of making 
what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan 

20 had had their handcuffs and ankle cuffs knocked off and 
for convenience' sake was putting them upon the rascals 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 493 

of the schooner's crew. The negroes were most of them 
out of the hold and swarming all round the dirty deck, with 
a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him 
in every dialect and patois of a dialect from the Zulu click 
up to the Parisian of Beledeljereed. 5 

As we came on deck Vaughan looked down from a hogs- 
head, on which he had mounted in desperation, and said : 

"Is there anybody who can make these wretches under- 
stand something? The men gave them rum, and that did 
not quiet them. I knocked that big fellow down twice, 10 
and that did not soothe him. And then I talked Choctaw 
to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they under- 
stood that as well as they understood the English." 

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two 
fine-looking Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had 15 
been found already, had worked for the Portuguese on the 
coast at Fernando Po. 

"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them 
that these rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope 
enough." 20 

Nolan "put that into Spanish" — that is, he explained 
it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, 
and they in turn to such of the negroes as could understand 
them. Then there was such a yell of delight, clinching of 
the fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's feet, and a 25 
general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous 
worship of Vaughan, as the deus ex machina of the occasion. 

"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will 
take them all to Cape P almas." 

This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practi- 30 
cally as far from the homes of most of them as New Orleans 
or Rio Janeiro was ; that is, they would be eternally separated 
from home there. And their interpreters, as we could under- 
stand, instantly said, "Ah, non Palmas!" and began to 
propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. 35 



494 NINETEENTH CENTURY —AMERICAN 

Vaughan was rather disappointed at this result of his liber- 
ality and asked Nolan eagerly what they said. The drops 
stood on poor Nolan's white forehead as he hushed the men 
down and said : 

5 "He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take 
us to our own country, take us to our own house, take us 
to our own pickaninnies and our own women, 1 He says 
he has an old father and mother who will die if they do not 
see him. And this one says he left his people all sick and 

10 paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come 
and help them, and that these devils caught him in the bay 
just in sight of home, and that he has never seen anybody 
from home since then. And this one says," choked out 
Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six 

15 months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon." 
Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan 
struggled through this interpretation. I, who did not un- 
derstand anything of the passion involved in it, saw that 
the very elements were melting with fervent heat and that 

20 something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes them- 
selves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony and 
Vaughan's almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he 
could get words, he said. "Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell 
them they shall go to the Mountains of the Moon, if they 

25 will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White Desert, 
they shall go home ! " 

And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they 
all fell to kissing him again, and wanted to rub his nose with 
theirs. But he could not stand it long ; and getting Vaughan 

30 to say he might go back, he beckoned me down into our boat. 
As we lay back in the stern sheets, and the men gave way, 
he said to me. "Youngster, let that show you what it is to 
be without a family, without a home, and without a country. 
And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing 

35 that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 495 

and your country, pray God in his mercy to take you that 
instant home to his own heaven. Stick by your family, 
boy ; forget you have a self, while you do everything for them. 
Think of your home, boy ; write and send and talk about it. 
Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought the farther you 5 
have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are 
free, as that poor black slave is doing now. And for your 
country, boy," and the words rattled in his throat, "and for 
that flag," and he pointed to the ship, "never dream a dream 
but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry 10 
you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to 
you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never 
look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray 
God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all 
these men you have to do with, behind officers, and govern- 15 
ment, and people even, there is the Country herself — your 
Country — and that you belong to her as you belong to 
your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand 
by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her 
to-day!" 20 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Dr. Hale's life. 2. Give an outline of the story 
from which this extract is taken. 3. Who is supposed to be telling the 
story? 4. Why did the United States vessel on which Nolan was 
stationed at this time attack the schooner with slaves on board? (The 
capture and exportation of slaves from Africa was illegal.) 5. Explain 
"patois," "the Parisian of Beledeljereed" (the northern shore of Africa 
had many French colonists), "Kroomen," "deus ex machina" "bar- 
racoon" (see Vocabulary). Locate Fernando Po, Cape Palmas. 6. Ex- 
plain the effect that the complaints of the negroes had upon Nolan. 
7. Discuss Nolan's speech. 

Read "The Man Without a Country" and " In His Name." 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 

1823-1893 

In the life of Prescott you have read how a man with failing 
vision, but with a stout heart, determined to make the most 
of what he had and to write a great history that should not die. 
About a quarter of a century after Prescott another youth grew 
up in Boston who did precisely the same thing. Change the 
names and dates and some of the details, and the story of one of 
these men's lives will almost fit the other. 

Parkman was the son of a distinguished Boston clergyman. 
Not being very strong as a boy, he was sent to live with his 
grandfather on a farm near Medford. He went to school in 
the village but spent most of his time in the woods, living as 
much like an Indian as possible. Indeed, the Indian life had 
for him a fascination that he never outgrew. 

After four years on the Medford farm he returned home and 
continued his studies at a private school in Boston. Here he 
became interested in chemistry, and spent his spare hours 
making noxious gases and trying experiments, which on several 
occasions narrowly failed of blowing him to pieces. He also 
read poetry and amused himself by putting into verse parts 
of Scott's "Ivanhoe." 

At seventeen he entered Harvard. By this time he had 
outgrown his passion for chemistry and was deeply interested 
in history. The lure of the woods also came back to him, and 
he spent his vacations tramping through the White Mountains 
or paddling a canoe on Lake Champlain, noting carefully 
all historic localities. 

496 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 497 

During his sophomore year he determined to write a 
history of the "Old French War," ending in the conquest of 
Canada, but later he enlarged his plan to include the whole 
of the conflict between France and England in America. This 
determination soon became the leading motive of his life. 

The intensity with which he entered upon everything that 
he did made even his vacation trips a tax upon his strength. 
During his senior year at Harvard his health broke down. He 
went to Europe, spent a few months in travel, returned some- 
what improved, and graduated with his class. Then, to 
please his father, who did not sympathize with his literary 
aims, he studied law, but he spent his leisure reading history. 

It was now that Parkman's sight began to fail. With the 
threefold purpose of resting his eyes, building up his health, 
and becoming acquainted at first hand with Indian character 
and life, he made a journey to the Black Hills and lived for a 
time among the Dakotahs. If he had been more moderate, the 
journey would probably have done him good, but he could 
never do a thing by halves, and consequently he came home 
worn out and almost blind. After a short rest he began to 
write, using a frame like Prescott's, by means of which he could 
work with bandaged eyes. His first book was "The Oregon 
Trail," an account of his journey across the plains. Then 
followed "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," which in point of time 
stands at the end of his series, but which he wrote first because 
he had the materials at hand and was fresh from his experiences 
of Indian life. 

Thus Parkman labored on for more than forty years. 
There was never a day of all those years when he was well. 
At times he was obliged for months to stop entirely; at 
other times he could work but five or ten minutes, when he 
would be seized with a strange confusion of thought that 
made further writing impossible. But when this had passed 
he would go to work again. Much of his writing was done 
in this way, a few minutes at a time ; but he never thought 



498 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

of giving up; that was the farthest from his plan. With 
soldierlike courage he kept at it, until he had produced eight 
wonderful works, covering one of the most interesting periods 
in American history. 

These books include " Pioneers of France in the New World, " 
"The Jesuits in North America," "La Salle and the Dis- 
covery of the Great West," "The Old Regime in Canada," 
"Count Frontenac," "A Half Century of Conflict," "Mont- 
calm and Wolfe," and "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." 



THE BUFFALO 

[This selection from "The Oregon Trail" describes an incident in 
Parkman's journey over the plains in 1846. Shaw was a college friend 
who accompanied Parkman. Henry Chatillon, a French Canadian, was 
their guide.] 

"Buffalo! buffalo!" It was but a grim old bull, roaming 
the prairie by himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there 
might be more behind the hills. Dreading the monotony and 
languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our horses, buckled 

5 our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry Chatillon 
in search of the game. 

At length, a mile in advance, we saw a band of bulls. Some 
were scattered grazing over a green declivity, while the rest 
were crowded together in the wide hollow below. Making 

10 a circuit, to keep out of sight, we rode towards them, until we 
ascended a hill, within a furlong of them, beyond which nothing 
intervened that could possibly screen us from their view. We 
dismounted behind the ridge, just out of sight, drew our saddle 
girths, examined our pistols, and mounting, again, rode over 

15 the hill and descended at a canter towards them, bending 
close to our horses' necks. Instantly they took the alarm ; 
those on the hill descended, those below gathered into a mass, 
and the whole got into motion, shouldering each other along 



500 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

at a clumsy gallop. We followed, spurring our horses to full 
speed ; and as the herd rushed, crowding and trampling in 
terror through an opening in the hills, we were close at their 
heels, half suffocated by the clouds of dust. But as we drew 
5 near, their alarm and speed increased ; our horses, being new 
to the work, showed signs of the utmost fear, bounding 
violently aside as we approached, and refusing to enter among 
the herd. The buffalo now broke into several small bodies, 
scampering over the hills in different directions, and I lost 

10 sight of Shaw; neither of us. knew where the other had gone. 
Old Pontiac ran like a frantic elephant up hill and down hill, 
his ponderous hoofs striking the prairie like sledge hammers. 
He showed a curious mixture of eagerness and terror, straining 
to overtake the panic-stricken herd, but constantly recoiling 

15 in dismay as we drew near. The fugitives, indeed, offered no 
very attractive spectacle, with their shaggy manes and the 
tattered remnants of their last winter's hair covering their 
backs in irregular shreds and patches, and flying off in the 
wind as they ran. At length I urged my horse close behind a 

20 bull, and after trying in vain to bring him alongside, I fired. 
At the report Pontiac swerved so much that I was again thrown 
a little behind. The herd ran up a hill, and I followed in 
pursuit. As Pontiac rushed headlong down on the other 
side, I saw Shaw and Henry descending the hollow on the 

25 right, at a leisurely gallop ; and in front the buffalo were just 
disappearing behind the crest of the next hill, their short tails 
erect, and their hoofs twinkling through a cloud of dust. 

At that moment I heard Shaw and Henry shouting to me ; 
but the muscles of a stronger arm than mine could not have 

30 checked at once the furious course of Pontiac, whose mouth 
was as insensible as leather. Gaining the top of the ridge, I 
saw nothing of the buffalo ; they had all vanished amid the 
intricacies of the hills and hollows. Reloading my pistols, in 
the best way I could, I galloped on until I saw them again 

35 scuttling along at the base of the hill, their panic somewhat 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 501 

abated. Down went old Pontiac among them, scattering 
them to the right and left; and then we had another long 
chase. About a dozen bulls were before us, scouring over the 
hills, rushing down the declivities with tremendous weight and 
impetuosity, and then laboring with a weary gallop upward. 5 
Still Pontiac, in spite of spurring and beating, would not close 
with them. One bull at length fell a little behind the rest, 
and by dint of much effort I urged my horse within six or 
eight yards of his side. His back was darkened with sweat; 
he was panting heavily, while his tongue lolled out a foot from 10 
his jaws. Gradually I came up abreast of him, urging 
Pontiac with leg and rein nearer to his side, when suddenly he 
did what buffalo in such circumstances will always do ; he 
slackened his gallop, and turning towards us, with an aspect of 
mingled rage and distress, lowered his huge, shaggy head for 15 
a charge. Pontiac, with a snort, leaped aside in terror, nearly 
throwing me to the ground, as I was wholly unprepared for 
such an evolution. I raised my pistol and fired after the bull, 
who had resumed his flight ; then I drew rein, and determined 
to rejoin my companions. It was high time. The breath 20 
blew hard from Pontiac's nostrils, and the sweat rolled in big 
drops down his sides ; I myself felt as if drenched in warm 
water. I looked about for some indications to show me where 
I was and what course I ought to pursue; I might as well 
have looked for landmarks in the midst of the ocean. How 25 
many miles I had run, or in what direction, I had no idea; 
and around me the prairie was rolling in steep swells and 
pitches, without a single distinctive feature to guide me. I 
had a little compass hung at my neck ; and ignorant that the 
Platte at this point diverged considerably from its easterly 30 
course, I thought that by keeping to the northward I should 
certainly reach it. So I turned and rode about two hours in 
that direction. The prairie changed as I advanced, softening 
away into easier undulations, but nothing like the Platte ap- 
peared, nor any sign of a human being ; the same wild endless 35 



502 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

expanse lay around me still ; and to all appearance I was as 
far from my object as ever. I began now to think myself 
in danger of being lost, and reining in my horse, summoned 
the scanty share of woodcraft that I possessed (if that term is 
5 applicable upon the prairie) to extricate me. It occurred to 
me that the buffalo might prove my best guides. I soon found 
one of the paths made by them in their passage to the river ; 
it ran nearly at right angles to my course; but turning my 
horse's head in the direction it indicated, his freer gait and 

10 erected ears assured me that I was right. 

But in the meantime my ride had been by no means a soli- 
tary one. The face of the country was dotted far and wide 
with countless hundreds of buffalo. They trooped along in 
files and columns, bulls, cows, and calves, on the green faces 

15 of the declivities in front. They scrambled away over the 
hills to the right and left ; and far off, the pale blue swells in 
the extreme distance were dotted with innumerable specks. 
Sometimes I surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone, or 
sleeping behind the ridges I ascended. They would leap up 

20 at my approach, stare stupidly at me through their tangled 
manes, and then gallop heavily away. The antelope were 
very numerous ; and as they are always bold when in the 
neighborhood of buffalo, they would approach to look at me, 
gaze intently with their great round eyes, then suddenly leap 

25 aside and stretch lightly away over the prairie, as swiftly as a 
race horse. Squalid, rufhanlike wolves sneaked through the 
hollows and sandy ravines. Several times I passed through 
villages of prairie dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his 
burrow, holding his paws before him in a supplicating attitude 

30 and yelping away most vehemently, whisking his little tail 
with every squeaking cry he uttered. Prairie dogs are not 
fastidious in their choice of companions ; various long, 
checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of 
the village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white 

35 ring around each eye, were perched side by side with the 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 503 

rightful inhabitants. The prairie teemed with life. Again 
and again I looked toward the crowded hillsides, and was sure 
I saw horsemen ; and riding near, with a mixture of hope and 
dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed into 
a group of buffalo. There was nothing in human shape amid 5 
all this vast congregation of brute forms. 

When I turned down the buffalo path, the prairie seemed 
changed ; only a wolf or two glided by at intervals, like con- 
scious felons, never looking to the right or left. Being now 
free from anxiety, I was at leisure to observe minutely the 10 
objects around me; and here, for the first time, I noticed 
insects wholly different from any of the varieties found far- 
ther to the eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my 
horse's head ; strangely formed beetles, glittering with metallic 
luster, were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before ; 15 
multitudes of lizards, too, were darting like lightning over the 
sand. I had run to a great distance from the river. It cost 
me a long ride on the buffalo path, before I saw, from the ridge 
of a sand hill, the pale surface of the Platte glistening in the 
midst of its desert valley, and the faint outline of the hills 20 
beyond waving along the sky. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a sketch of Parkman's life. In what respects was it like 
that of another American historian? 2. Where did the events of this 
story occur? 3. What is the more correct name for the animal here 
called the buffalo ? Describe the animal and tell something of its habits. 
What is its present condition? 4. Define " misanthropic." Why is the 
word suitable here? 5. What are "holsters"? 6. Describe the prairie 
dog. 7. Explain "like conscious felons." 

8. Note the series of pictures : (a) the start ; (b) the attack upon the 
herd; (c) the running away of Pontiac ; (d) chasing the stragglers; 
(e) the charge of the bull ; (/) lost on the plains (note especially the ani- 
mal life) ; (g) the discovery of the river. 

The best books with which to begin the reading of Parkman are 
"The Oregon Trail" and "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West." 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

1827-1900 

" One of the best things in the world to be, is a boy." That 
is what Charles Dudley Warner says in the first sentence of 
the book " Being a Boy." Warner himself was a real boy, and 
knew how good it is. He was, in fact, so successful at being 
a boy that he grew up to be a successful man. 

Charles Dudley Warner was born on a farm near the little 
village of Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1827. As soon as he 
could walk alone he used to wander off to the great hill 
pasture where the wintergreen berries grew, and the sweet 
fern and the sassafras. He loved the big bowlders covered 
with gray moss, and the brook that brawled over the stones, 
and the apple orchard with its load of red and yellow fruit. 
He had a good father, who saw the fine spirit that was in 
him, and who felt that some day the boy would do something 
worth while. This father was not a college man, but always 
regretted that he was not, and determined that his boy should 
have the advantages that he himself had lacked. The father 
died when Charles was only five years old, and the last words 
which he said were, " Charles must go to college." 

Soon after this the old home was given up, and Charles 
went to live with a relative who had been made his guardian. 
This relative lived near Charlemont, some ten miles away. 
Charles went to the district school at Charlemont, and was 
a good scholar; but he had so many " chores" to do that 
there was little time left him for play. He drove the oxen, 
and cleaned the stable, and cut down the thistles, and weeded 
the beet bed, and hoed the potatoes, and raked the sticks and 

504 







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y'v 







Ghavles ©ud/etj Earner 



506 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

leaves out of the front yard, and split the kindling, and turned 
the grindstone for the hired man, and went after the cows, 
and was told that after he had finished all these things he 
might play ball. But there was not much time left for ball. 

Yet he did have fun. Was there ever a boy who didn't find 
a chance for fun somewhere ? When he was cutting down the 
big thistles, he used to imagine that they were the whiskered 
villains he had read of in the fairy books, and he went to them 
with his bill hook, slashing off their heads, and shouting, "Die, 
ruffian!" 

In winter, after school, he slid downhill on the crust of the 
snow, or skated on the pond, and at noontime built snow forts 
and had snowball fights — the Indians against the early 
settlers — in which all the boys took part. 

When Charles was about twelve he went with his mother 
to her old home in New York State. There he prepared 
for college and found time to do some reading. He earned 
his way by working in a drug store, then in a printing office, 
and after a time in the village post office. Then he went to 
Hamilton College, and when he had graduated, in 1851, he 
joined a surveying party that was going out to Missouri. 
After that he studied law and was for several years an attorney 
in Chicago. At the age of thirty-one he returned East and 
went into newspaper work. He became editor of the Hartford 
Courant and for many years had charge of a department in 
Harper's Magazine. 

Among his best-known books are " In the Wilderness/' 
"Backlog Studies," "My Summer in a Garden," and "My 
Winter on the Nile." With Mark Twain he wrote a story of 
early Missouri life called "The Gilded Age." 

Mr. Warner was a great traveler. Several of his books 
describe journeys in Egypt, Asia Minor, and other lands. 
He was interested in all good works, and especially in im- 
proving our prisons. He had a long life of usefulness, and 
died at his home in Hartford in 1900. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 507 

LOST IN THE WOODS 

[This selection from "In 'the Wilderness" describes an experience of 
the author while on a camping trip among the Adirondack Mountains.] 

The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for a thick 
undergrowth of moose-bush. It was raining, — in fact, it 
had been raining, more or less, for a month, — and the woods 
were soaked. This moose-bush is most annoying stuff to 
travel through in a rain ; for the broad leaves slap one in the 5 
face, and sop him with wet. The way grew every moment 
more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage brought 
night on prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a near- 
sighted man, whose glasses the rain rendered useless : such 
a person ought to be at home early. On leaving the river- 10 
bank I had borne to the left, so as to be sure to strike either 
the clearing or the road, and not wander off into the measure- 
less forest. I confidently pursued this course, and went gayly 
on by the left flank. That I did not come to any opening 
or path, only showed that I had slightly mistaken the 15 
distance : I was going in the right direction. 

I was so certain of this, that I quickened my pace, and got 
up with alacrity every time I tumbled down amid the slippery 
leaves and catching roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the 
left. It even occurred to me that I was turning to the left 20 
so much, that I might come back to the river again. It 
grew more dusky, and rained more violently ; but there was 
nothing alarming in the situation, since I knew exactly where 
I was. It was a little mortifying that I had miscalculated 
the distance : yet, so far was I from feeling any uneasiness 25 
about this, that I quickened my pace again, and, before I 
knew it, was in a full run ; that is, as full a run as a person 
can indulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in the way. 
No nervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there. 
I desired to look upon myself as the person "not lost, but gone 3 o 



508 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

before." As time passed, and darkness fell, and no clearing or 
road appeared, I ran a little faster. It didn't seem possible 
that the people had moved, or the road been changed ; and 
yet I was sure of my direction. I went on with an energy 

5 increased by the ridiculousness of the situation, the danger 
that an experienced woodsman was in of getting home late 
for supper ; the lateness of the meal being nothing to the gibes 
of the unlost. How long I kept this course, and how far I 
went on, I do not know ; but suddenly I stumbled against an 

10 ill-placed tree, and sat down on the soaked ground, a trifle 
out of breath. It then occurred to me that I had better verify 
my course by the compass. There was scarcely light enough 
to distinguish the black end of the needle. To my amazement, 
the compass, which was made near Greenwich, was wrong. 

15 Allowing for the natural variation of the needle, it was absurdly 
wrong. It made out that I was going south when I was going 
north. It intimated, that, instead of turning to the left, I 
had been making a circuit to the right. 

The compass annoyed me. I've known experienced guides 

20 utterly discredit it. It couldn't be that I was to turn about, 

and go the way I had come. Nevertheless, I said to myself, 

"You'd better keep a cool head, my boy, or you are in for a 

night of it. Better listen to science than to spunk." And 

I resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little weary 

25 of the rough tramping : but it was necessary to be moving ; 

for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedly chilly. 

I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along. 

A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw. 

Everything was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be 

30 necessary to build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't 

find a dry bit of wood. 

It began to be a question whether I could hold out to wajk 
all night ; for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 509 

that a specter was walking by my side. This was Famine. 
To be sure, I had only recently eaten a hearty luncheon : 
but the pangs of hunger got hold on me when I thought that 
I should have no supper, no breakfast ; and, as the procession 
of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew hungrier 5 
and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, and 
wasting away : already I seemed to be emaciated. It is 
astonishing how speedily a jocund, well-conditioned human 
being can be transformed into a spectacle of poverty and 
want. Lose a man in the woods, drench him, tear his panta- 10 
loons, get his imagination running on his lost supper and the 
cheerful fireside that is expecting him, and he will become 
haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon these things to 
excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise him, if he 
contemplates an adventure of this kind, to provide himself 15 
with matches, kindling-wood, something more to eat than one 
raw trout, and not to select a rainy night for it. . . . 

I had now given up all expectation of finding the road, 
and was steering my way as well as I could northward towards 
the valley. In my haste I made slow progress. Probably 20 
the distance I traveled was short, and the time consumed 
not long ; but I seemed to be adding mile to mile, and hour to 
hour. I had time to review the incidents of the Rus so- 
Turkish war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question; 
I outlined the characters of all my companions left in camp, 25 
and sketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and dis- 
paraging observations they would make on my adventure; 
I repeated something like a thousand times, without con- 
tradiction, "What a fool you were to leave the river!" 
I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard its loud roar, always 30 
deceived by the wind in the tree tops ; I began to entertain 
serious doubts about the compass, — when suddenly I be- 
came aware that I was no longer on level ground; I was 
descending a slope ; I was actually in a ravine. In a moment 
more I was in a brook newly formed by the rain. " Thank 35 



5io NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

Heaven!" I cried, "this I shall follow whatever con- 
science or the compass says." In this region, all streams 
go, sooner or later, into the valley. This ravine, this stream, 
no doubt, led to the river. I splashed and tumbled along 
5 down it in mud and water. Down hill we went together, 
the fall showing that I must have wandered to high ground. 
When I guessed that I must be close to the river, I suddenly 
stepped into mud up to my ankles. It was the road, — run- 
ning, of course, the wrong way, but still the blessed road. It 

iowas a mere canal of liquid mud; but man had made it, and 
it would take me home. I was at least three miles from the 
point where I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had be- 
fore me a toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of the way 
in a ditch ; but it is truth to say I enjoyed every step of it. 

15 1 was safe ; I knew where I was ; and I could have walked till 
morning. The mind had again got the upper hand of the 
body, and began to plume itself on its superiority : it was even 
disposed to doubt whether it had been "lost" at all. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a brief account of the life of Charles Dudley Warner. 2. From 
what book is the selection taken? 3. What is the reference in "not 
lost but gone before"? (From the Latin writer Seneca, who used it in 
speaking of the dead.) 4. What does the reference to the Russo- 
Turkish War tell you of the time at which this occurred ? (The Russo- 
Turkish War was in 1877-1878.) 5. W T hat tendency do travelers in 
the woods generally show to depart from a straight line ? (The inclina- 
tion is to travel in a circle.) 6. What examples of humor do you find 
in the selection? 7. Compare it with Thoreau's account of the woods, 
pages 466-471. 

Other readings from Warner : The Sugar Camp, from " Being a Boy " ; 
A-Huntingof the Deer, and How I Killed a Bear, from "In the Wilder- 
ness"; Second, Third, and Ninth Weeks, from "My Summer in a 
Garden." 



HENRY TIMROD 

1829-1867 

In the old city of Charleston, South Carolina, toward 
the close of the year 1829 was born one of the most inspired 
of our Southern poets, Henry Timrod. The father of this 
boy was also a writer of verse and was the editor of a literary 
paper ; his mother was an earnest lover of nature, and from 
her the boy received his passionate fondness for the woods and 
flowers. 

When Timrod grew up and went to school, it happened 
that his seat mate was Paul Hayne, a boy who also became in 
after years a well-known poet. There was less than a month's 
difference in age between the two boys, and they became close 
friends. Hayne tells us that when they were about thirteen, 
Henry came to school one morning with "a ballad of stirring 
adventures" which he had just written and which he wanted 
his friend to read and admire. His friend read and admired 
and urged him to write more. 

Timrod went to college at the University of Georgia, but 
left at the end of his first year — partly because of ill health 
and partly because there was not enough money in the family 
to pay his expenses. He returned to Charleston and for a 
time studied law, but it soon became clear to him that he was 
not made for a lawyer. At about this time the Civil War 
began. Timrod enlisted in the Southern army and went to 
the front, but was ill most of the time and at last decided 
regretfully that he was not strong enough to live a soldier's 
life. He continued with the army for a time as a news- 
paper correspondent, but this also proved too hard for him. « 

511 



512 NINETEENTH CENTURY —AMERICAN 

So he went home and devoted himself to the task of getting 
well. When he had partly regained his health he became 
assistant editor of a daily paper in Columbia, and when 
Columbia was burned he went with his paper back to Charles- 
ton. He married in 1864 and for a year or two enjoyed 
fairly good health, but the newspaper work paid him little and 
his poems still less; he was in sore straits and had to sell 
his furniture and silver, piece by piece, in order to buy gro- 
ceries. Notwithstanding his troubles he remained cheerful 
and wrote jokingly to Hayne, "We have eaten two silver 
pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, innumer- 
able chairs, and a huge bedstead." 

Matters soon went from bad to worse. The poet found 
that he had consumption in an advanced stage, and although 
he was helped somewhat by two visits to Hayne 's home among 
the pines of Georgia, he received no permanent relief, and 
died two years after the close of the war, at the age of only 
thirty-seven. About five years after his death his poems 
were collected by Hayne and published in book form. 

SPRING 

[This fine imaginative poem describes the coming of spring in Carolina. 
Notice how the objects of nature — spring, the jasmine, the forest tree, 
the crocus, the rose — all seem to have a human quality. This sym- 
pathy with nature is one of the marks of true poetry.] 

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air 
Which dwells with all things fair, 
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, 
Is with us once again. 

Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns 
Its fragrant lamps, and turns 
Into a royal court with green festoons 
The banks of dark lagoons. 



5H NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

In the deep heart of every forest tree 
The blood is all aglee, 

And there's a look about the leafless bowers 
As if they dreamed of flowers. 

5 Yet still on every side we trace the hand 

Of Winter in the land, 
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, 
Flushed by the season's dawn ; 

Or where, like those strange semblances we find 
10 That age to childhood bind, 

The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, 
The brown of autumn corn. 

As yet the turf is dark, although you know 
That, not a span below, 
15 A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, 

And soon will burst their tomb. 

Already, here and there, on frailest stems 
Appear some azure gems, 
Small as might deck, upon a gala day, 
20 The forehead of a fay. 

In gardens you may note amid the dearth 
The crocus breaking earth ; 
And near the snowdrop's tender white and green, 
The violet in its screen. 

25 But many gleams and shadows need must pass 

Along the budding grass, 
And weeks go by, before the enamored South 
Shall kiss the rose's mouth. 



HENRY TIMROD 515 

Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn 
In the sweet airs of morn ; 
One almost looks to see the very street 
Grow purple at his feet. 

At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, 
And brings, you know not why, 
A feeling as when eager crowds await 
Before a palace gate 

Some wondrous pageant ; and you scarce would start, 
If from a beech's heart, 

A blue-eyed dryad, stepping forth, should say, 
"Behold me! I am May!" 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Timrod's life. 2. To what part of the coun- 
try does this poem refer? What tells you? 3. Explain " nameless 
pathos." 4. Explain lines 5-8, page 512. Notice the large number 
of similes and metaphors. Timrod's verse is particularly figurative. 
"The jasmine burns its fragrant lamps" means either that the fra- 
grance of the flower is like the incense from some cathedral lamp, or 
that the bright yellow of the jasmine in the dark lagoons shines out like 
the flame of a lamp. 

5. Explain lines 1-4, page 514. Find a metaphor and a simile. 
Find examples of personification in this poem. 6. What figure is in 
line 15, page 514? 7. What figure in "azure gems," line 18? 8. Ex- 
plain lines 27, 28, page 514. 9. Explain the last two stanzas. 
10. Memorize the stanzas that you like best. 

Other fine poems of Timrod are "Hark to the Shouting Wind," 
"Katie," "A Summer Shower," and "The Cotton Boll." 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 

1830-1886 

Hayne's life is the story of another brave man who lost 
home, money, and health, but who, in the midst of it all, 
kept a stout heart, and found beauty and peace, because he 
sought for them. 

On New Year's Day in the year 1830 Paul Hamilton 
Hayne was born in a fine old mansion in Charleston, South 
Carolina. His forefathers had come from England in the 
early colonial days before the United States became a nation. 
Some of them had fought in the Revolution and had done 
important work for the new government under Washington. 
His uncle, Robert G. Hayne, was governor of South Carolina 
and a famous speaker. His father was an officer in the navy. 

So this boy came into a home where there was wealth, 
culture, a large library of good books, and everything that 
should make a lad successful. He was a rine scholar, went 
through school and college in Charleston, and began early 
to write for the newspapers and magazines. You have read 
of his school life with Henry Timrod. As young men the 
two were also thrown together in their literary work and were 
both members of a literary group the head of which was 
William Gilmore Simms, the Southern novelist. Hayne 
was for a time editor of RusselVs Magazine. He married a 
beautiful young Charleston woman, wrote and published 
several books of poems, and was becoming well known as a 
poet, when the Civil War broke out. 

Soon after this, Charleston was besieged. Hayne's home 
was one of many that were burned ; his books and everything 

516 



518 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

that he owned were destroyed, and he was left very 
poor. He had joined the Southern army, but his health 
broke down, and he found that he could not stand the hard 
life of a soldier. So, with his wife and child, he went to 
Georgia and built a little cottage, or shanty, as he called 
it, in the pine woods near Augusta. There he lived for 
twenty- three years, fighting death, as Timrod and Lanier 
fought it, and there at last he died, in 1886. He left a son, 
William Hamilton Hayne, who was also a poet. 

• 

A STORM IN THE DISTANCE 

I see the cloud-born squadrons of the gale, 

Their lines of rain like glittering spears deprest, 

While all the affrighted land grows darkly pale 
In flashing charge on earth's half-shielded breast. 

5 Sounds like the rush of trampling columns float 

From that fierce conflict ; volleyed thunders peal, 
Blent with the maddened wind's wild bugle-note ; 
The lightnings flash, the solid woodlands reel ! 

Ha ! many a foliaged guardian of the height, 
10 Majestic pine or chestnut, riven and bare, 

Falls in the rage of that aerial fight, 

Led by the Prince of all the Powers of air ! 

Vast boughs like shattered banners hurtling fly 
Down the thick tumult : while, like emerald snow, 
15 Millions of orphaned leaves make wild the sky, 
Or drift in shuddering helplessness below. 

Still, still, the leveled lances of the rain 

At earth's half shielded breast take glittering aim ; 
All space is rife with fury, racked with pain, 
20 Earth bathed in vapor, and heaven rent by flame ! 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 519 

At last the cloud-battalions through long rifts 
Of luminous mists retire : — the strife is done, 

And earth once more her wounded beauty lifts, 
To meet the healing kisses of the sun. 

FLYING FURZE 

[The flying furze is the winged seed of a tall, coarse grass or sedge that 
grows in parts of the South. Notice the music of this poem, and how 
the words seem to float and dance like the down.] 

Airily, f airily, over the meadows, 5 

Over the broom-grasses waving and gay, 

0, see how it shimmers, 

How wavers and glimmers, 
Flying, and flying away ! 

Hastefully, wastefully, over the cop.ses, 10 

Over the hedgerows in scattered array, 

See, see how 'tis curling 

And twinkling and whirling, 
Ever and ever away ! 

Merrily, cheerily, down the far verges, 15 

Verges of fields growing misty and gray, 

Still, still how it shimmers, 

Grows fainter and glimmers, 
Shimmers, and glimmers away ! 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell what you can about Hayne. 2. To what does he liken the 
storm ? Notice the words " squadrons," " spears," " charge," " trampling 
columns," "volleyed thunders," etc. Name other similar words or 
phrases in the poem. What experience of Hayne's probably suggested 
this figure ? 3. Name the metaphors and similes in the two poems ; which 
do you like best? 4. Explain: "orphaned leaves," "healing kisses." 

Other Hayne readings: "The Meadow Brook," "Winds of the 
Winter." 



EMILY DICKINSON 

i 830-1886 

In the beautiful old college town of Amherst, Massa- 
chusetts, stands a colonial house behind a high thick hedge of 
evergreens. It is as quiet and secluded a home as one could 
find, and in it for more than half a century lived one of the 
most secluded of our poets, Emily Dickinson. 

She was born there in 1830, and grew up, a shy, delicate, 
elfish child, gay and full of fun, but thoughtful beyond her 
years. Her father was a lawyer and served for many years 
as treasurer of Amherst College. Emily attended a private 
school in Amherst and later went to Mount Holyoke Semi- 
nary at South Hadley, only about ten miles distant. As a 
young woman she was brilliant, witty, and well-informed on 
all subjects. As she grew older she gave herself up to her 
books and her flowers. It is said that whenever a visitor 
came through the gate she would leave the family and run 
away to her room. 

She never married, but spent her life with her father and 
mother in the old home behind the evergreens. Just across 
the lawn lived her brother and his wife, with a niece and two 
nephews whom she greatly loved. She played with the 
children as if she were herself a child. 

Her poems are all short, and she wrote them only for 
her friends, inclosing them in letters which are as quaint 
and brief and full of meaning as the poems themselves. 

Among the closest of these friends was Helen Fiske, a 
daughter of Professor Fiske, of the college, and later known 



EMILY DICKINSON 521 

as Helen Hunt Jackson, — who was born in Amherst a year 
later than Miss Dickinson and also became celebrated as a 
poet and writer. 

THE BLUEBIRD 1 

Before you thought of spring, 

Except as a surmise, 

You see — God bless his suddenness ! 

A fellow in the skies ' 

Of independent hues, 5 

A little weather-worn, — 

Inspiriting habiliments 

Of indigo and brown. 

With specimens of song, 

As if for you to choose, IO 

Discretion in the interval, 

With gay delays he goes 

To some superior tree 

Without a single leaf, 

And shouts for joy to nobody J S 

But his seraphic self ! 

AUTUMN l 

The morns are meeker than they were, 

The nuts are getting brown ; 

The berry's cheek is plumper, 

The rose is out of town. 20 

The maple wears a gayer scarf, 

The field a scarlet gown. 

Lest I should be old-fashioned, 

I'll put a trinket on. 

1 Copyright, 1891. Little, Brown, and Company. 



522 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

IF I CAN STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING 1 

If I can stop one heart from breaking, 

I shall not live in vain ; 

If I can ease one life the aching, 

Or cool one pain, 

Or help one fainting robin 

Into his nest again, 

I shall not live in, vain. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Tell what you can of the life of Emily Dickinson. 2. Explain 
"Except as a surmise," "Of independent hues," "A little weather- 
worn," ''Inspiriting habiliments." 3. Why does the poet say "God 
bless his suddenness"? Is this break in the line better or worse than if 
she had said "A fellow in the skies comes suddenly"? Why? 4. Ex- 
plain " With specimens of song," "Discretion in the interval." (Probably 
the full meaning is that the bluebird uses discretion in the interval be- 
tween these bits of song.) 5. What do the last two lines tell you of the 
bluebird's song? Is "seraphic" a good adjective here? Why? Try 
to feel the poem : the bluebird a little ruffled by his long journey, the 
bare trees, the snatches of song, the joy, the carelessness of it all. 

6. Explain "The morns are meeker than they were "(softer). 7. What 
is meant by "The rose is out of town" (gone, — not at home). 8. What 
is the "gayer scarf" of the maples? The "scarlet gown" of the 
fields? 9. What feeling leads the poet to think of putting on a trinket 
(a gay ribbon, — something bright)? 10. Memorize the poem "If I 
Can Stop One Heart from Breaking." 

Other simple poems by Miss Dickinson are "Out of the Morning" 
(see The Young and Field Literary Readers, Book Three, page 65), "A 
Day," "The Robin," "In the Garden," "Autumn," "Chartless." 

1 Copyright, 1891. Little, Brown, and Company. 



SAMUEL L. CLEMENS ("MARK TWAIN") 

1835-1910 

Picture to yourself an old Mississippi River steamboat 
drawing up to the levee at Hannibal, Missouri, some seventy 
years ago. A deck hand is standing on the end of the gang- 
plank with a coil of rope in his hand ; the mate is shouting 
orders; a gang of negroes, laden with bales and boxes, are 
waiting to carry their freight ashore as soon as the gang- 
plank touches the landing stage, while on the levee, watching 
every movement with keen-eyed interest, stand a crowd of 
boys, too much excited to keep still. This is such a scene as 
young Sam Clemens witnessed nearly every day, and it made 
him long with unspeakable longing to be a river pilot. 

Young Clemens was born in the little village of Florida, 
Missouri, in 1835. His father came of a fine old Virginia 
family and was better educated than most of the neigh- 
bors. His mother, too, was well schooled for that day, and 
was a woman of good judgment and a kind heart. When 
Sam was still very young the family moved to Hannibal, 
and« there he grew up, going to school in a haphazard sort of 
way and spending his spare time on and along the river. He 
says he was dragged out in a drowning condition nine times 
before he was fifteen. 

When he was twelve his father died, and Sam was obliged 
to go to work. He would gladly have found a place as cabin 
boy on one of the river boats, but his mother objected so 
strongly that, instead, he went into a local printing office 
and learned to set type. After three years of this work he 

523 



524 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

was considered an expert compositor and set out to see some- 
thing of the world, getting jobs in newspaper offices as far 
east as New York and Philadelphia. It is said that he had 
saved ten dollars before leaving Hannibal and had sewed it 
into the sleeve of his coat, to be used when most needed, but 
he was always able to earn his way, and the ten-dollar bill 
was still in his sleeve when he returned home. 

He now went back to his early dream of being a pilot. 
An old riverman agreed to " teach him the river" from St. 
Louis to New Orleans for five hundred dollars and take his 
pay out of the young man's first wages. The agreement was 
carried out. Clemens learned the river, with all its shoals 
and snags and shifting currents, secured a position, and for 
five years was a pilot. 

At twenty-six he went to Nevada and tried silver mining. 
He says that on the side of a canyon he " built a small, rude 
cabin and roofed it with canvas, leaving a corner open to 
serve as a chimney, through which the cattle used to tumble 
occasionally at night." He did not make the fortune that 
he expected, but he wrote a number of articles for a news- 
paper in Virginia City, which earned him the position of city 
editor. These articles were signed "Mark Twain," a name 
which he took from the cry of the leadsmen on the Mississippi 
steamboats, as they called out the depth of the water. 

From Virginia City Clemens went to San Francisco and 
later to Hawaii, supporting himself by newspaper work. 
Upon his return he gave a humorous lecture, which was so 
successful that he repeated it in New York. Then he joined 
a party of tourists who were going abroad, and wrote a hu- 
morous account of his travels in a book called "Innocents 
Abroad." 

This book made his fame and his fortune. It was dif- 
ferent from any book of travel that had ever been written, 
because it made fun of everything that tourists had taken 
seriously. Clemens nwried the sister of a young man whom 



526 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

he met on this excursion abroad, and a few years later settled 
in Buffalo^ New York, as editor and part owner of the Buffalo 
Express. But his success as an author made him unwilling 
to spend more time in newspaper work. So he moved to 
Hartford, Connecticut, and devoted the rest of his life to 
writing books. His summer home was near Elmira, New 
York, and his writing room was upon a hilltop, with a wide 
view on all sides. It was built of glass and made to look like 
the pilot house of a Mississippi River steamboat. 

" Innocents Abroad" was followed by " Roughing It," 
then came "The Gilded Age," which Clemens and Charles 
Dudley Warner wrote together; then "Tom Sawyer," "A 
Tramp Abroad," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Life on 
the Mississippi," and "Huckleberry Finn." 

THE NEW ENGLAND WEATHER 

[This selection is from a newspaper account of a speech made at a 
dinner of the New England Society, in New York City, in 1876.] 

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England 
weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. 
The weather is always doing something there; always at- 
tending strictly to business; always getting up new designs 

5 and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But 
it gets through more business in spring than in any other 
season. In the spring T have counted one hundred and 
thirty-six different kinds of weather within four and twenty 
hours. It was I who made the fame and fortune of the man 

iowho had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition 
at the Centennial, which so astounded the foreigners. He 
was going to travel around the world and get specimens from 
all climes. I said, "Don't do it; just come to New England 
on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do 

15 in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came, 
and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, he 



SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (" MARK TWAIN") 527 

confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he 
had never heard of before. And as to quantity, after he had 
picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, 
he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare, 
weather to hire out, weather to sell, weather to deposit, weather 5 
to invest, and weather to give to the poor. 

Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate 
prophecy and thoroughly deserves it. You take up the 
paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks 
off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down 10 
South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See 
him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets 
to New England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't 
know what the weather is going to be in New England. Well, 
he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something like 15 
this: " Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to 
the southward and westward and eastward and points be- 
tween ; high and low barometer, swapping around from place 
to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, 
succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and 20 
lightning." Then he jots down this postscript from his 
wandering mind, to cover accidents : "But it is possible that 
the program may be wholly changed in the meantime." 
Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather 
is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is certain to be 25 
plenty of weather, a perfect grand review, but you never 
can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. 
You fix up for the drought ; you leave your umbrella in the 
house and sally out with your sprinkling pot, and two to one 
you are drowned. You make up your mind that an earth- 30 
quake is due ; you stand from under and take hold of some- 
thing to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you 
are struck by lightning. 

But, after all, there are at least two or three things about 
that weather (or, if you please, the effects produced by it) 35 



528 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't 
our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit 
the weather with one feature which compensates for all its 
bullying vagaries — the ice storm. Every bough and twig 

5 is strung with ice beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree 
sparkles cold and white like the Shah of Persia's diamond 
plume. Then the wind waves the branches, and the sun comes 
out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms 
that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored 

10 fires; which change and- change again, with inconceivable 
rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to 
gold. The tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very ex- 
plosion of dazzling jewels, and it stands there the acme, the 
climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewilder- 

15 ing, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make 
the words too strong. Month after month I lay up hate 
and grudge against the New England weather ; but when 
the ice storm comes at last I say : " There, I forgive you now ; 
the books are square between us; you don't owe me a cent; 

20 your little faults and foibles count for nothing; you are the 
most enchanting weather in the world." 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Write or tell what you can of Mark Twain. 2. What is meant 
by "a sumptuous variety"? 3. Much of Mark Twain's humor con- 
sists in exaggeration — so great that the reader is not for a moment 
deceived by it — and in his saying an absurd thing in a perfectly serious 
way. Find examples of exaggeration on page 526; 527; 528. 4. Who 
is "Old Probabilities"? 5. What well-known animal is suggested by 
the phrase " see his tail drop"? 

6. Put into simpler words "compensates for all its bullying vagaries." 
7. Read the description of the ice storm. Is it too strong? Could you 
add anything to it? 8. Explain "myriads," "acme," "foibles." 

Mark Twain's stories for young people are "The Prince and the 
Pauper," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn." 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

1836-1907 

Aldrich calls the story of his boyhood "The Story of a Bad 
Boy," but the reading of it does not give one the feeling that 
he was very bad. He was mischievous, as most boys are; 
but he was never mean. If he fought, it was to defend a 
smaller boy who was being picked upon ; if he got into mis- 
chief, it was generally mischief of a sort that could injure no 
one. He was, on the whole, a hearty, healthy young fellow, 
a real live boy. 

Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 
the autumn of 1836, only a few months before Howells. 
When he was about a year and a half old his parents moved 
to New^ Orleans, where Mr. Aldrich, senior, invested his 
money in the banking business — invested it so securely, 
his son tells us, that he was never able to get more than half 
of it out again. The New Orleans home of the Aldriches was 
an old brick house with wide verandas, in the midst of a 
large garden. There were fig and orange trees and magnolias 
all about it, and it must have been a very comfortable sort of 
place for a boy to grow up in. But Tom's father wished that 
Tom should be educated in the North, and some years later 
took him back to Portsmouth to live with his grandfather and 
go to school. It is this life at Portsmouth that is described 
m "The Story of a Bad Boy." Some of the names are changed 
a trifle, but it is easy to see that Rivermouth is Portsmouth 
and that Tom Bailey is Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 

529 



530 NINETEENTH CENTURY —AMERICAN 

The old Bailey or Nutter place, where he lived with Grand- 
father Nutter and Aunt Abigail, and Kitty Collins the good- 
natured Irish maid, and Gypsy the pony, is described so 
faithfully that we can almost see it. Tom had a little bed- 
room over the hall, with wall paper figured as he has said, 
with small bunches of leaves unlike any that ever grew in 
this world, and on every other bunch perched a yellow bird 
pitted with crimson spots, as if it had just recovered from a 
severe attack of the smallpox. Once, when Tom was ill, 
he counted these birds on the wall paper and found that there 
were two hundred and sixty-eight, not including those split 
in two where the paper was badly joined. 

There were books — Baxter's "Saints' Rest," for which 
Tom did not care much, and "Robinson Crusoe" and "The 
Arabian Nights" and "Do'n Quixote," for which he did. At 
school he made friends. There was Pepper Whitcomb, 
with the many freckles, who offered Tom the core of his 
apple the first day at recess. There was Charley Marden, 
who gave him some molasses candy with cayenne pepper 
on it during recitation and became his faithful comrade 
ever after, because Tom swallowed it and didn't tell the 
teacher. There was Harry Blake, who used to cut his initials 
on everything he came across and who was especially fond of 
cutting them on the shells of stray mud turtles. There were 
Fred Langdon, and fair-haired little Binny Wallace, and Phil 
Adams, and Jack Harris ; and many a good time did Tom 
have with them. 

After several years of jolly boy life in school and at play, 
there came a sad day when Tom received a letter from the 
South saying that his father was dead in New Orleans. It 
was found, too, that the banking business had failed and had 
carried with it not only his father's money but a large part 
of his grandfather's as well. Tom had by this time prepared 
for college and was ready to enter Harvard, but he was obliged 
to change his plans and go to work. An uncle in New York 



532 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

offered him a place in his counting-house, and Tom accepted 
it, but he spent his spare moments writing verses, because 
he loved to write and could write well. His little "Ballad 
of Baby Bell" came out one day in a New York newspaper 
and was copied into other papers from one end of the country 
to the other. He knew then what his life work was to be; 
and he began it by leaving his uncle's office and finding a 
place as a proof reader in a New York publishing house. 
Meanwhile he wrote for the magazines, and for a year was 
war correspondent for the New York Tribune. 

In 1866 he went to Boston and became editor of a weekly 
literary paper, also writing for various magazines. Some 
fifteen years afterwards, when Howells retired as editor of 
the Atlantic Monthly, Aldrich succeeded him. 

In Boston he became the friend of Longfellow, Holmes, 
and others of the older group of New England writers. He 
was greatly loved, because of his kind heart, his wit, and his 
good fellowship. He spent the winters in Boston and the 
summers either at his seaside home or at his farm, which he 
called "Ponkapog." 

Among his poems are "Baby Bell," "Before the Rain," 
and "Marjorie's Almanac." His best stories are "Marjorie 
Daw" and "The Stillwater Tragedy." He also wrote a 
volume of travel, "From Ponkapog to Pesth," and sketches 
of Portsmouth called "An Old Town by the Sea." 

After Mr. Aldrich's death in 1907, subscriptions were 
raised ; the old Bailey house, or "Nutter House," as he called 
it, was bought ; and the furniture that had been in it when 
"Tom Bailey" lived there was collected and put back in the 
old places. Even the little coat that Tom used to wear 
hangs over the back of a chair in his bedroom, as if it were 
just ready to be put on. The old house is open to visitors, 
and one who has once seen it feels more strongly than words 
can tell that "Tom Bailey" was a real living presence. 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 533 

ON A BALCONY 

[From the volume of travel sketches, "From Ponkapog to Pesth."] 



A Balcony, as we northerns know it, is a humiliating ar- 
chitectural link between in-doors and out-of-doors. To be on a 
balcony is to be nowhere in particular : you are not exactly 
at home, and yet cannot be described as out; your privacy 
and your freedom are alike sacrificed. ... But when the 5 
balcony hangs from the third-story window of an Old World 
palace, and when the facade of that Old World palace looks 
upon the Bay of Naples, you had better think twice before 
you speak depreciatingly of balconies. With that sheet of 
mysteriously blue water in front of you ; with Mount Vesu- 10 
vius moodily smoking his perpetual calumet on your left; 
with the indented shore sweeping towards Pozzuoli and Baiae 
on your right; with Capri and Ischia notching the ashen 
gray line of the horizon ; with the tender heaven of May 
bending over all — with these accessories, I say, it must be is 
conceded that one might be very much worse off in this 
world than on a balcony. 

I know that I came to esteem the narrow iron-grilled shelf 
suspended from my bedroom window ... as the choicest 
spot in all Naples. After a ramble through the unsavory 20 
streets it was always a pleasure to get back to it, and I think 
I never in my life did a more sensible thing in the depart- 
ment of pure idleness than when I resolved to spend an entire 
day on that balcony. One morning, after an early break- 
fast, I established myself there. My companions had gone 25 
to explore the picture-galleries ; but I had my picture-gallery 
... in the busy strada below, in the villa-fringed bay, in 
the cluster of yellow-roofed little towns clinging to the 
purple slopes of Mount Vesuvius and patiently awaiting 
annihilation. ... 3 o 



534 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

For the first half hour I kept my glass turned pretty con- 
stantly in the direction of Mount Vesuvius, trying to make 
out the osier ia at the Hermitage. . . . 

Whether or not the small inn had shifted its position over- 

5 night, I was unable to get a focus upon it. In the meanwhile 
I myself, in my oriole nest overhanging the strada, had become 
an object of burning interest to sundry persons congregated 
below. I was suddenly aware that three human beings were 
standing in the middle of the carriage-way with their faces 

10 turned up to the balcony. The first was a slender, hideous 
girl, who held out a tambourine, the rattlesnake-like clatter 
of which had attracted my attention; next to her stood a 
fellow with canes and palm-leaf fans; then came a youth 
loaded down with diminutive osier baskets of Naples straw- 

15 berries, which look, and as for that matter taste, like tufts 
of red worsted. This select trio was speedily turned into a 
quartette by the arrival of a seafaring gentleman, who bore 
on his head a tray of boiled crabs, sea-urchins, and small 
fried fish. As a fifth personage approached, with possibly 

20 the arithmetical intention of adding himself to the line, I 
sent the whole part off with a wave of the hand ; that is to 
say, I waved to them to go, but they merely retired to the 
curb-stone opposite the hotel, and sat down. 

The last comer, perhaps disdaining to associate himself too 
25 closely with vulgar persons engaged in trade, leaned indolently 
against the sea-wall behind them, and stared at me in a vacant 
dreamy fashion. . . . The upturned face was for the moment 
as empty of expression as a cipher, but I felt that it was 
capable, on occasion, of expressing almost any depth of cun- 
30 ning and dare-devil ferocity. It was Masaniello — Masaniello 
ruined by good government and the dearth of despots. 

The girl with the tambourine was not in business by herself ; 
she was the familiar of a dark-browed organ-man, who now 
made his appearance, holding in one hand a long fishing-line 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 535 

baited with monkey. On observing that this line was too 
short to reach me, the glance of despair and reproach which 
the pirate cast up at the balcony was comical. Never- 
theless he proceeded to turn the crank of his music-mill, 
while the girl — whose age I estimated at anywhere between 5 
sixteen and sixty — executed the tarantella in a disinterested 
manner on the sidewalk. I had always wished to see the 
tarantella danced, and now I had seen it I wished never to 
see it more. I was so well satisfied that I hastened to drop 
a few soldi into the outstretched tambourine. ... 10 

My gratuity had the anticipated effect ; the musician took 
himself off instantly. But he was only the avant coureur 
of his detestable tribe. To dispose at once of this feature of 
Neapolitan street life, I will state that in the course of that 
morning and afternoon one hundred and seven organmen 15 
and bagpipe players paid their respects to me. It is odd, 
or not, as you choose to look at it, that the city which has the 
eminence of being the first school of music in the world should 
be a city of hand-organs. I think it explains the constant 
irritability and the occasional outbreaks of wrath on the part 20 
of Mount Vesuvius. . . . 

I was so secure from annoyance that I did not allow the 
three merchants arranged on the curb-stone to distract me. 
Occupied with the lively many-colored life of the street and 
the shore, I failed even to notice when they went away. 25 
Glancing in their direction somewhat later, I saw that they 
had gone. But Masaniello remained, resting the hollow of 
his back and his two elbows on the coping of the wall, and 
becoming a part of the gracious landscape. He remained 
there all day. Why, I shall never know. ... 30 

As the morning wore on, I found entertainment enough in 
the constantly increasing stream of foot-passengers — soldiers, 
sailors, monks, peddlers, paupers, and donkeys. Now and 
then a couple of acrobats in soiled tights and tarnished spangles 
would spread out their square of carpet in front of the hotel, 35 



536 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

and go through some innocent feats ; or it was a juggler who 
came along with a sword trick, or a man with fantoccini, 
among which Signor Punchinello was a prominent character, 
as he invariably is in Italian puppet-shows. This, with the 
5 soft Neapolitan laugh and chatter, the cry of orange-girls, 
the braying of donkeys, and the strident strain of the hand- 
organ, which interposed itself ever and anon, like a Greek 
chorus, was doing very well for a quiet little street of no 
pretensions whatever. . . . 

II 

10 When I returned to my post of observation after lunch I 
found the street nearly deserted. Naples was taking its 
siesta. A fierce, hot light quivered on the bay and beat down 
on the silent villas along shore, making the mellow-tinted 
pilasters and porticoes gleam like snow against the dull green 

15 of the olive-trees. The two cones of Mount Vesuvius, now 
wrapped in a transparent violet haze, which brought them 
strangely near, had for background a fathomless sky of un- 
clouded azure. Here and there, upon a hill-side in the dis- 
tance, small white houses, with verandas and balconies, 

20 Close latticed to the brooding heat, 

seemed scorching among their dusty vines. . . . 

As I reached up to lower the awning overhead, I had a 
clairvoyant consciousness that some one was watching me 
from below. Whether Masaniello had brought his noon- 

25 day meal of roasted chestnuts with him, or, during my ab- 
sence, had stolen to some low trattoria in the vicinity to 
refresh himself, I could not tell ; but there he was, in the act 
now of lighting one of those long pipe-stem cigars called 
Garibaldis. . . . 

30 The great squares of shadow cast upon the street by the 
hotel and the adjoining buildings were deepening by degrees. 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 537 

Fitful puffs of air came up from the bay — the early precur- 
sors of that refreshing breeze which the Mediterranean sends 
to make the summer twilights of Naples delicious. Now and 
then a perfume was wafted to the balcony, as if the wind had 
stolen a handful of scents from some high-walled inclosures 
of orange-trees and acacias, and flung it at me. The white 
villas, set in their mosaic of vines on the distant hill-side, had 
a cooler look than they wore earlier in the day. The heat 
was now no longer oppressive, but it made one drowsy — that 
and the sea air. An hour or more slipped away from me una- 10 
wares. Meanwhile, the tide of existence had risen so im- 
perceptibly at my feet that I was surprised, on looking down, 
suddenly to find the strada flooded with streams of carriages 
and horsemen and pedestrians. All the gay life of Naples, 
that had lain dormant through the heavy noon, had awakened, 15 
like the princess in the enchanted palace, to take up the 
laugh where it left off and order fresh ices at the cafes. 

I had a feeling that Masaniello — he was still there — was 
somehow at the bottom of all this ; that by some diablerie 
of his, maybe with the narcotic fumes of that black cigar, 20 
he had thrown the city into the lethargy from which it was 
now recovering. . . . 



Ill 

The twilights in Southern Italy fall suddenly, and are of 
brief duration. While I was watching the darkening shadow 
of the hotel on the opposite sea-wall, the dusk closed in, and 25 
the street began rapidly to empty itself. A curtain of mist 
was already stretched . from headland to headland, shutting 
out the distant objects. Here and there on a jutting point 
a light blossomed, its duplicate glassed in the water, as if 
the fiery flower had dropped a petal. Presently there were a 30 
hundred lights, and then a thousand, fringing the crescented 
shore. . . . 



538 NINETEENTH CENTURY —AMERICAN 

The breeze from the bay had a sudden chill in it now; 
the dampness of the atmosphere was as heavy as fine rain. 
I pushed back my chair on the balcony, and then I lingered 
a moment to see the moon rising over Capri. ... As I glanced 
5 into the silent street beneath, there was Masaniello, a black 
silhouette against the silvery moonlight. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give a sketch of the life of T. B. Aldrich. 2. Explain : "facade," 
" depreciatingly," "smoking his perpetual calumet," " strada," "pa- 
tiently awaiting annihilation," "osteria" "Hermitage." 3. What figure 
in "oriole nest," page 534, line 6? 4. Explain : "osier baskets," "Masani- 
ello, ruined by good government," etc. (Masaniello was the leader of a 
revolution against the despotic government of Naples in 1647. The face 
and manner of this Italian suggested what Masaniello might have 
been, if there had been no despots to crush.) 

5. Explain : "tarantella," "soldi," " avant coureur" "fantoccini" 
"Punchinello," "siesta" "pilasters," "clairvoyant," "trattoria," "pre- 
cursors," "tide of existence." 6. Explain the allusion in "like the 
princess in the enchanted palace," page 537, line 16. 7. What is 
diablerie? lethargy? 8. Find the most striking pictures in this selec- 
tion. 9. Point out ten similes that particularly impress you. 10. What 
touches of humor seem to you particularly good ? 

Other readings from Aldrich : Prose — Our New Neighbors at Ponka- 
pog, Goliath, The Little Violinist, The Cruise of the Dolphin (from 
"The Story of a Bad Boy"). Verse — Baby Bell, Friar Jerome's Beauti- 
ful Book, Alec Yeaton's Son, Miantowona. 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

1837- 

Some seventy years ago or more, if you could have looked 
one afternoon into the back yard of an old house in Hamilton, 
Ohio, you might have seen a barefooted boy under a big 
cherry tree writing as hard as he could write. The boy was 
only about ten, but he was composing a tragedy which was 
to be played by his " crowd" of boys in the loft of a barn. 
Most of the boys were to be Roman conspirators, and one was 
to plunge a cardboard dagger into the heart of a consul, while 
another cried, " Strike, Stephanos, strike!" It was written 
in verse and was extremely thrilling. 

The boy was William D. Howells, and this play-writing 
was one of the things that he was very fond of doing. Other 
things were swimming, playing marbles, and flying kites. 
He tells us that he was really two boys : part of him went 
with the fellows and entered into every sort of fun, the other 
part wrote verses, read ancient history, and dreamed great 
dreams. In his books "A Boy's Town" and "The Flight 
of Pony Baker" he has told us a great deal about himself 
and about the boys with whom he used to play in those days 
when he was a lad down in the old town of Hamilton, near 
Cincinnati. 

Howells was one of a family of eight children and was 
born in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, just across the river from 
Wheeling, in the year 1837. When he was only three years 
old his parents moved to Hamilton, Ohio, and his father 
became editor of a weekly newspaper. William learned to set 

539 



54Q NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

type when he was a very small boy and spent much time in 
the printing office — when he was not playing with the boys 
or writing tragedies. The family lived in Hamilton till he 
was fifteen, and then moved to Dayton, where the elder 
Howells took charge of another paper. But the Dayton 
paper did not pay very well, and the four boys all had to work 
in the printing office to lessen the expenses. Mr. Howells 
tells us that sometimes he had to work at the type case until 
eleven o'clock at night and then get up at four in the morning 
to deliver papers. 

After two years of this sort of life in Dayton, the paper 
failed. Then the father was given charge of a gristmill in 
the country, and the family lived in a log cabin, worked in 
the mill, and cultivated about eighty acres of corn. The 
boys slept in the loft. There were cracks in the roof, through 
which they could see the stars, and often in the morning they 
stepped out of bed into a drift of snow, which had blown 
through the chinks of the roof. William's favorite books 
at Hamilton had been Goldsmith's histories of Greece and 
Rome, "Don Quixote," and "The Arabian Nights/' but 
here, in an old barrel in the loft, he found a volume of the 
early poems of a new poet named Longfellow, and was greatly 
taken by them. 

After a time the family returned to town, and William 
went to Columbus, where he got a job at typesetting on the 
Ohio State Journal, at four dollars a week. This salary he 
contributed toward the support of the family. Meanwhile he 
studied by himself and learned Spanish, French, and Italian. 

At nineteen he became a reporter on the Cincinnati Gazette 
and at twenty-two went back to the State Journal at Columbus 
as news editor. Not long after this he sent some poems to 
the Atlantic Monthly; they were printed, and he was asked 
for more. He also wrote a biography of Lincoln, who was 
then a candidate for president. Afterwards Howells was 
made United States consul at Venice ; and while living there, 



542 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

found time to write two delightful books of travel, "Vene- 
tian Life" and "Italian Journey s." 

After returning to this country he wrote for several of 
the New York papers and later was made editor of the A tlantic 
Monthly. About 187 1 he began to write stories, and they 
proved very successful. "Their Wedding Journey," "A 
Chance Acquaintance,' 1 "The Rise of Silas Lapham," and 
"A Hazard of New Fortunes" are among the best-known. 
He also wrote a number of farces, or short plays, as "The 
Sleeping Car," "The Mouse Trap," and "The Elevator." 
He is one of the foremost modern American novelists. 

AN INDIAN BATTLE IN OHIO 1 

[This account of the rout of General St. Ciair's expedition against the 
Indians in 1791 is from Howells's "Stories of Ohio."] 

At this day we can hardly imagine the dismay that the rout 
of St. Clair and the slaughter of his men spread through the 
Ohio country. He was a gallant officer, the governor of the 
Northwest Territory, and the trusted friend of Washington. 

5 It is true that his army was largely the refuse of the Eastern 
States, picked up in the streets of the larger towns and lured 
into the wilderness with the promise of three dollars a month ; 
that these men were badly fed, badly clothed, and badly 
drilled ; and that they were led by a general whose strength 

10 and spirits were impaired by sickness. But with them was 
a large body of Kentuckians and other backwoodsmen, skilled 
in Indian warfare, and eager for the red foes with whom they 
had long arrears of mutual injury to bring up ; and the hopes 
of the settlers rested securely upon these. The Indians were 

15 led by Little Turtle, one of their greatest war chiefs, and at the 
point where General Wayne two years later built one of his 
forts, and called it Recovery, they surprised St. Clair's troops. 

1 From Howells's "Stories of Ohio." Copyright 1897, by American Book 
Company, Publishers. 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 543 

It was an easy slaughter. St. Clair was suffering so much 
with gout that he could not move from his horse when he 
was helped to the saddle, and was wholly unfit to fight. Yet 
he went undauntedly through the battle; horse after horse 
was shot under him, and his clothes were pierced with nines 
of the bullets which the Indians rained upon his men from 
every tree of the forest. The backwoodsmen had hardly 
a chance to practice the Indians' arts against them before 
the rout began. The cannon which St. Clair had brought 
into the wilderness with immense waste of time and toil, 10 
proved useless under the fire that galled the artillerymen. 
The weak, undisciplined, and bewildered army was hemmed 
in on every side, and the men were shot down as they huddled 
together or tried to straggle away, till half their number was 
left upon the field. Of course none of the wounded were 15 
spared. The Americans were tomahawked and scalped where 
they fell ; one of the savages told afterwards that he plied 
his hatchet until he could hardly lift his arm. All the Ohio 
tribes shared in the glory of this greatest victory of their 
race, — Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, Ottawas, Chippe- 20 
was, and Pottawottomies. There had been plenty of game 
that year; they were all in the vigor and force which St. 
Clair's ill-fated army lacked; and they lustily took their 
fill of slaughter. 

Many stories of the battle were told by those who escaped. 25 
Major Jacob Fowler, of Kentucky, an old hunter, who went 
with the army as surveyor, carried his trusty rifle, but he had 
run short of bullets, the morning of the fight, which began at 
daybreak. He was going for a ladle to melt more lead, when 
he met a Kentucky rifleman driven in by the savages, and 30 
begged some balls of him. The man had been shot through 
the wrist, and he told Fowler to help himself from his pouch. 
Fowler was pouring out a double handful, when the man said, 
"Stop; you had better count them." Fowler could not 
help laughing, though it was hardly the time for gayety. 35 



544 NINETEENTH CENTURY -r AMERICAN 

"If we get through this scrape, my dear fellow," said he, 
"I will return you twice as many." But they never met 
again, and Fowler could only suppose that his cautious 
friend was soon tomahawked and scalped with the other 

5 wounded. Fowler took a tree, and shot Indians till his gun- 
lock got out of order. Then he picked up a rifle which had 
been thrown away, and which he found his bullets would 
fit, and renewed the fight. It was a very cold November 
morning, and his fingers became so stiff that he could not 

iohold the bullets, which he had to keep in his mouth, and 
feed into his rifle from it. At one time he was behind a very 
small tree, and two Indians fired on him at such close range 
that he felt the smoke of their guns and gave himself up for 
dead. But both had missed him, and he got away from the 

15 battlefield unhurt. 

Another Kentuckian, a young ranger named William 
Kennan, was one of the first riflemen driven back by the over- 
whelming force of Indians. He tried to hide in the tall grass, 
but found that his only hope was in his heels. The savages 

20 endeavored to cut him off, but he distanced all except one, 
who followed him only three yards away. Kennan expected 
him every moment to throw his tomahawk at him, and he 
felt in his belt for his own. It had slipped from its place, and 
he found himself wholly unarmed, just as he came to a tree 

25 which the wind had blown down, and which spread before 
him a mass of roots and earth eight or nine feet high. He 
gathered all his strength, bounded into the air, and cleared it, 
while a yell of wonder rose from the baffled Indians behind 
him. A little later he came upon General Madison of Ken- 

30 tucky sitting on a log, so spent with the day's work and loss of 
blood from a wound, that he could no longer walk, and wait- 
ing for the Indians to come up and kill him. Kennan ran back 
and caught a horse which he had seen grazing, put Madison 
on it, and walked by his side till they were out of danger. 

35 The friendship thus begun lasted through their lives. 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 545 

Two years after, when a detachment of Wayne's army 
camped upon the scene of the carnage, they had to scrape 
away the heaps of bones and carry them out of their tents 
before they could make their beds. They buried six hundred 
skulls on the field. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of the life of Howells. Name some of his books. 
2. Who was General St. Clair? (An officer in the Revolution, under Wash- 
ington; president of the Continental Congress in 1787; first governor 
of the Northwest Territory ; and at the time of this defeat, Commander- 
in-chief of the United States army.) 3. Point out on a map the site 
of this battle (Fort Recovery, Mercer County). 4. How do you ac- 
count for the fact that the Indians won? 5. Of what other celebrated 
Indian victory does this remind you? (See page 237.) 

Two good stories of boy life by Mr. Howells are "A Boy's Town" 
and "The Flight of Pony Baker." They both refer to scenes of his own 
boyhood. 



JOHN BURROUGHS 

1837- 

On the western edge of the Catskill Mountains, in the 
little village of Roxbury, New York, John Burroughs the 
naturalist was born in 1837. It was April; the grass and 
flowers were just opening; the swallows were coming from 
the South ; the woodchucks. were waking up and crawling 
out of their holes; all nature was springing into life, when 
John Burroughs came to life also. 

He grew up on a farm and has always been a farmer at 
heart. His education was gained at the little red village 
schoolhouse and at the neighboring academies of Ashland 
and of Coopers town. When he stopped going to school as 
a pupil, he went as a teacher, and taught, "off and on," 
for about eight years, except when he was farming. It 
was in one of the small towns where he taught that he found 
and married Mrs. Burroughs, and it was during these early 
years that he began to write essays, in the style of Dr. 
Johnson and of Emerson. One of these essays, printed in 
the Atlantic Monthly when he was twenty-three, was his 
first public appearance as a writer. Lowell, then editor of 
the Atlantic, thought that this John Burroughs was trying 
to deceive him by sending him one of Emerson's early essays. 
When he was convinced that it was the work of a new 
writer, he declared that the young man would some day make 
his mark. 

During the Civil War Mr. Burroughs went to Washing- 
ton, expecting to enlist in the army> but was offered a posi- 
tion as clerk in the Treasury Department, accepted it, and 

546 



JOHN BURROUGHS 547 

held it nearly ten years. He spent his leisure writing his 
first book, " Wake-Robin," and part of " Winter Sunshine." 
Here are memories of the Roxbury farm and records of walks 
in the country around Washington. 

For more than ten years after leaving his clerkship in 
Washington, Mr. Burroughs was employed by the govern- 
ment as a bank examiner. He lived simply and saved most 
of his salary, so that at last he was able to go back to the 
Catskills and buy a fine farm on the west bank of the Hudson. 
He planted a vineyard on its sunny slope, built a comfortable 
house with the stones which he found scattered over his 
fields, and devoted himself to raising grapes and writing books. 
He would probably tell you that the grapes were his most 
important product, but most of us prefer his books. He 
named the farm Riverby. 

Just below the house, and overlooking the vineyard and 
the river, is a little building of but one room, which Mr. 
Burroughs uses for his study. Here he does his writing, 
when he is not at Slabsides or at Woodchuck Lodge. Slabsides 
is a cabin a mile or more up in the mountains. Mr. Bur- 
roughs built it himself and covered the outside with slabs — 
hence its name. At Slabsides he lives close to nature. The 
birds, the rabbits, the gray fox, and the 'possum come to 
his doorway, and he makes them his friends. 

Woodchuck Lodge is still farther away. It is a lonely 
farmhouse, where Mr. Burroughs sometimes spends weeks 
at a time, making his study in the barn. Perhaps it would 
be nearer the truth to say that he does his writing in the barn, 
for his study is the out-of-doors, as far as he can ramble. At 
Woodchuck Lodge, as at Slabsides, the wild creatures are 
all about him, and he knows them well. 

Mr. Burroughs is a plain, whole-souled man, who enjoys 
life and does not care for wealth or style or the other things 
that most men think important. He has taught the world 
much about birds and animals, but perhaps the most 



548 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

important thing that he has taught is how little one really 
needs in this world in order to be happy. 

Mr. Burroughs's best-known books, besides " Wake-Robin" 
and "Winter Sunshine," are perhaps " Locusts and Wild 
Honey," "Pepacton," and " Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers." 
"Sharp Eyes" is the title of one of the papers in "Locusts and 
Wild Honey." This name suggests why the author is so 
delightful a guide and companion. His eyes are trained to 
see everything that is going on around him. 

FOLLOWING THE BEES 

[The selection which follows is from "''Pepacton."] 

If you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how 
many sweets such a trip yields beside honey, come with me 
some bright, warm, late September or early October day. 
It is the golden season of the year, and any errand or pursuit 
5 that takes us abroad upon the hills or by the painted woods 
and along the amber-colored streams at such a time is enough. 
So, with haversacks rilled with grapes and peaches and apples 
and a bottle of milk — for we shall not be home to dinner — 
and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with 

10 a piece of comb-honey neatly fitted into it — any box the 
size of your hand, with a lid, will do nearly as well as the elab- 
orate and ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter — ■ 
we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway, 
under great chestnut trees, whose nuts are just dropping, 

15 then through an orchard and across a little creek, thence 
gently rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward 
some high, uplying land, behind which rises a rugged wooded 
ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all this section. 
Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, 

20 and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms 
of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar birds, high- 
holes, and cow blackbirds make amid the black-cherry trees 



JOHN BURROUGHS 549 

as we pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after 
black cherries, and we see their marks at various points. 
Several crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat field 
we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful move- 
ments and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground 5 
with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride ; 
there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a 
little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and 
self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these 
acres are mine, he says, and all these crops ; men plow and 10 
sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet 
and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out 
of place on the ground; the game birds hurry and skulk, 
but the crow is at home and treads the earth as if there were 
none to molest or make him afraid. ... I ~ 

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a 
point where we will make our first trial — a high stone wall 
that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, and 
separated from it by a broad field. There are bees at work 
there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little maneuver- 20 
ing to sweep one into our box. Almost any other creature 
rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into 
a cage in this way would show great confusion and alarm. 
The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion 
stronger than its love of fife or fear of death, namely, desire 25 
for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty. It 
is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick 
to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the 
wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoul- 
ders in one of the half -filled cells and is oblivious to everything 30 
else about it. Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. 
We step back a few paces and sit down upon the ground so as 
to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In 
two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily 
from the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey 35 



55o NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

behind, and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a 
rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute 
objects first, then the larger and more distant, till having 
circled about the spot five or six times and taken all its bear- 
5 ings it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast 
to the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will 
swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun. 
This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away 
toward a farmhouse half a mile away, where I know bees are 

iokept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, 
much to our satisfaction, goes straight towards the woods. 
We could see the brown speck against the darker back- 
ground for many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes 
to be able to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, 

15 the former, he says, being lighter. But there is no differ ence ; 
they are both alike in color and in manner. Young bees are 
lighter than old, and that is all there is of it. If a bee lived 
many years in the woods it would doubtless come to have some 
distinguishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few months 

20 at the farthest, and no change is wrought in this brief time. 

Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we 

have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle 

of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract 

bees half a mile or more. When no flowers can be found, 

25 this is the quickest way to obtain a bee. 

It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunter's 
box its first feeling is one of anger ; it is as mad as a hornet ; 
its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and darts 
to and fro, and gives vent to its rage and indignation in no 

30 uncertain manner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It 
says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, may 
be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon 
comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its indigna- 
tion, and it seems to say, "Well, I had better take posses- 

35sion of this and carry it home." So after many feints and 



JOHN BURROUGHS 551 

approaches and dar tings off with a loud angry hum, as if 
it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself. 

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it 
has made two or three trips home with its booty. When 
other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel 5 
and dispute over the box, and clip and dart at each other 
like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the 
sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or rivalry, 
but wrath. 

A bee will usually make three or four trips from the hunter's 10 
box before it brings back a companion. I suspect that the 
bee does not tell its fellows what it has found, but that they 
smell out the secret; it doubtless bears some evidence with 
it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been upon honeycomb 
and not upon flowers, and its companions take the hint and 15 
follow, arriving always many seconds behind. Then the 
quantity and quality of the booty would also betray it. 
No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about a hive that 
note and tell everything. "Oh, did you see that? Peggy 
Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and one of 20 
the upstairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with 
apple-blossom honey, which she deposited and then rushed 
off again like mad. Apple-blossom honey in October ! Fee, 
fi, fo, fum ! I smell something ! Let's after." 

In about half an hour we have three well-defined lines 25 
of bees established — two to farmhouses and one to the 
woods, and our box is being rapidly depleted of its honey, 
about every fourth bee goes to the woods, and now that 
they have learned the way thoroughly they do not make 
the long preHminary whirl above the box, but start directly 30 
from it. The woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, 
and we do not like to follow the line of bees until we have tried 
at least to settle the problem as to the distance they go into 
the woods — whether the tree is on this side of the ride or 
in the depth of the forest on the other side. So we shut up 35 



552 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

the box when it is full of bees and carry it about three hundred 
yards along the wall from which we are operating. When 
liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, go off 
in the same directions they have been going; they do not 

5 seem to know that they have been moved. . But other bees 
have followed our scent, and it is not many minutes before a 
second line to the woods is established: This is called cross- 
lining the bees. The new line makes a sharp angle with the 
other line, and we know at once that the tree is only a few 

iorods into the woods. The two lines we have established 
form two sides of a triangle of which the wall is the base; 
at the apex of the triangle, or where the two lines meet in 
the woods, we are sure to find the tree. We quickly follow 
up these lines, and where they cross each other on the side of 

i 5 the hill we scan every tree closely. I pause at the foot of 
an oak and examine a hole near the root ; now the bees are 
in this tree, and their entrance is on the upper side near the 
ground, not two feet from the hole I peer into, yet so quiet 
and secret is their going and coming that I fail to discover 

20 them and pass on up the hill. Failing in this direction, I 
return to the oak again, and then perceive the bees going 
out in a small crack in the tree. 

We boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree with an ax we have 
procured. At the first blow the bees set up a loud buzzing, 

25 but the side of the cavity is soon cut away and the interior 
with its white-yellow mass of comb-honey is exposed, and not 
a bee strikes a blow. This may seem singular, but it has 
nearly always been my experience. When a swarm of bees 
are thus rudely assaulted with an ax, they evidently think 

30 the end of the world has come, and like true misers as they 
are, each one seizes as much of the treasure as it can hold; 
mother words, they all fall to and gorge themselves with honey 
and calmly await the issue. When in this condition they 
make no defense and will not sting unless taken hold of. 

35 In fact they are as harmless as flies. 



JOHN BURROUGHS 553 

Bees are always to be managed with boldness and deci- 
sion. Any halfway measure, any timid poking about, any 
feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be quickly 
resented. The popular notion that bees have a special antip- 
athy toward certain persons and a liking for certain others 5 
had only this fact at the bottom of it : they will sting a person 
who is afraid of them and goes skulking and dodging about, and 
they will not sting a person who faces them boldly and has 
no dread of them. I have climbed up into a large chestnut 
that contained a swarm in one of its cavities, and chopped 10 
them out with an ax, being obliged at times to pause and 
brush the bewildered bees from my hands and face. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Write or tell what you can of the author of this selection. 2. De- 
scribe in your own words the picture with which the selection opens. 
Why is the season called "golden"? Why are the woods called 
"painted"? What makes the streams amber colored? 3. Tell how to 
find the home of the wild bees. Draw a diagram showing the two points 
where the bee-hunter's box is placed, the home of the bees, and the lines 
taken by the bees in carrying home the honey. 

4. What is the length of a bee's life? 5. How do the other bees 
know that one of their companions has found honey ? Notice how much 
strongei and more interesting the description is made by imagining that 
the bees are talking among themselves. 6. What is the "apex" of a 
triangle? 7. How do wild bees behave when they are attacked and 
their honey is taken away ? 8. How should one treat bees if one does 
not wish to be stung ? 

Read all of Mr. Burroughs's "An Idyl of the Honey Bee," from which 
this selection is taken. It is in "Pepacton" and is also reprinted in 
"Birds and Bees." Other good selections from Mr. Burroughs's nature 
studies will be found in "Birds and Bees," "Sharp Eyes, and Other 
Papers," and "Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers." 



BRET HARTE 

1839-1902 

Life in California during the ten years which followed 
1849 was a curious mixture of good and evil. Gold had 
been discovered, and people of every sort were flocking to 
get it. Farmers, mechanics, lawyers, physicians, scholars, 
adventurers, gamblers, roughs, and honest men, all went 
together and worked in the " diggings." They went by 
wagon or on foot, across the plain, or sometimes by sea around 
Cape Horn, but the reason of their going was always the same 
— they were after gold. 

Among the thousands who went to California during 
this period were a Mrs. Harte of Albany, New York, and 
her son Bret. Mr. Harte, the husband and father, had been 
a teacher in a large private school in Albany and had died 
leaving his family without means of support. Bret — or 
Francis Bret, as the baptismal register had it — was born in 
1839, and had received only a common-school education, 
when, at the age of fifteen, he started with his mother on the 
long and difficult journey westward to St. Louis and across 
the plains. 

After numerous adventures they reached the end of their 
journey, but they did not find what they went for. The boy 
was unsuccessful in his efforts at mining and equally so in 
trying to teach school, but after a time he found a job in a 
printing office, learned to set type, and three years after his 
arrival in California was a regular compositor in the office 
of the San Francisco Era. While working at the type case 
he would occasionally set up something for which he had no 

554 



556 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

copy — a paragraph or two about some scene or event that he 
remembered in the mining camps — and would slip it into 
the paper to fill a column. Western newspapers at that time 
were carelessly managed, and often the men in the composing 
room would fill in with material that the editor knew nothing 
about. But these paragraphs of Bret Harte's were so good 
that the editor, when he saw them, asked for more, and the 
work of the young compositor gradually changed from type- 
setting to literary composition. 

Not long after this, Harte was made the editor of a literary 
paper in San Francisco called The Californian, but it was not 
a success. Then he secured a position in the United States 
Mint at San Francisco, which he held for six years, meanwhile 
writing a number of . short stories and poems for various 
papers. In 1868 a magazine known as the Overland Monthly 
was started in San Francisco, and Harte, who was then be- 
coming known as a writer, was given the editorship of it. 
The first few stories that he wrote for the new magazine 
brought him a wide reputation. "The Luck of Roaring 
Camp," " Tennessee's Partner," "The Outcasts of Poker 
Flat," and others of these stories are tales of mining life in 
which rough and hardened men are shown to have their good 
side. Harte's poem "Truthful James, or The Heathen Chinee " 
was also published in the Overland Monthly and was copied 
and read all over the United States and England. 

In 187 1 Harte left California and went to New York, 
where he wrote stories for the Atlantic Monthly and gave 
popular lectures on California life. About seven years later 
he was appointed United States consul to the city of Kre- 
feld, Germany, and a little later was transferred to Glasgow. 
He never returned to the United States to live, but when he 
had lost his consular position through a change in the adminis- 
tration, he went to London and remained there during the 
rest of his life. 



BRET HARTE 557 

BABY SYLVESTER 

[In this story Harte tells how he once took care of a baby bear that 
belonged to a miner in California. The miner, Dick Sylvester, who was 
a friend of Harte's, had suddenly been called East and sent the bear to 
Harte for protection. Harte says that he sat up nearly all night with 
Mrs. Brown, his landlady, waiting for its arrival. The story proceeds 
as follows :] 

One o'clock came, but no Baby. Two o'clock — three 
o'clock passed. It was almost four when there was a wild 
clatter of horses' hoofs outside, and with a jerk a wagon 
stopped at the door. In an instant I had opened it and 
confronted a stranger. 5 

"Do you reckon to tackle that animile yourself?" he 
asked, as he surveyed me from head to foot. 

I did not speak, but, with an appearance of boldness I 
was far from feeling, walked to the wagon and called "Baby ! " 

The straps were cut loose, and Baby quietly tumbled to 10 
the ground, and rolling to my side, rubbed his foolish head 
against me. 

I had great difficulty in keeping Mrs. Brown from smother- 
ing him in blankets and ruining his digestion with the deli- 
cacies of her larder ; but I at last got him completely rolled 15 
up in the corner of my room and asleep. I lay awake some 
time later with plans for his future. I finally determined to 
take him to Oakland, where I had built a little cottage and 
always spent my Sundays. And in the midst of a rosy pic- 
ture of domestic felicity I fell asleep. 20 

When I awoke it was broad day. My eyes at once sought 
the corner where Baby had been lying. But he was gone. 
I sprang from the bed, looked under it, searched the closet, 
but in vain. The door was still locked ; but there were the 
marks of his blunted claws upon the sill of the window that 25 
I had forgotten to close. He had evidently escaped that way 
— but where ? The window opened upon a balcony, to which 



558 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

the only other entrance was through the hall. He must be 
still in the house. 

I dressed myself hurriedly and slipped into the hall. The 
first object that met my eyes was a boot lying upon the 
5 stairs. It bore the marks of Baby's teeth, and as I looked 
along the hall I saw too plainly that the usual array of freshly 
blackened boots and shoes before the lodgers' doors was not 
there. As I ascended the stairs I found another, but with 
the blacking carefully licked off. On the third floor were 

10 two or three more boots slightly mouthed ; but at this point 
Baby's taste for blacking had evidently palled. 

A little farther on was a ladder leading to an open scuttle. 
I mounted the ladder, and reached the flat roof that formed 
a continuous level over the row of houses to the corner of 

15 the street. Behind the chimney on the very last roof some- 
thing was lurking. It was the fugitive Baby. He was 
covered with dust and dirt and fragments of glass. But he 
was sitting on his hind legs, and was eating an enormous 
slab of peanut candy with a look of mingled guilt and in- 

20 finite satisfaction. 

I hurried him, with the evidences of his guilt, back to 
the scuttle and descended on tiptoe to the floor beneath. 
I met no one on the stairs, and his own cushioned tread was 
inaudible. I think he was conscious of the dangers of detec- 

25 tion, for he even forbore to breathe, or much less chew the 
last mouthful he had taken ; and he skulked at my side with 
the sirup dropping from his motionless jaws. 

I locked him in when I went to breakfast, where I found 
Mrs. Brown's lodgers in a state of intense excitement over 

30 certain mysterious events of the night before and the dread- 
ful revelations of the morning. It appeared that burglars 
had entered the block from the scuttles ; that being suddenly 
alarmed they had quitted our house without committing 
any depredation, dropping even the boots they had collected 

35 in the halls ; but that a desperate attempt had been made 



BRET HARTE 559 

to force the till in the confectioner's shop on the corner, 
and that the glass show case had been ruthlessly smashed. 
A courageous servant in No. 4 had seen a masked burglar 
on his hands and knees attempting to enter their scuttle ; 
but on her shouting, "Away wid yees," he instantly fled. 5 

That night Baby and I decamped from Mrs. Brown's. 
It was nearly midnight when I reached my little cottage on 
the outskirts of Oakland ; and it was with a feeling of re- 
lief and security that I entered, locked the door, and turned 
him loose in the hall, satisfied that henceforward his depreda- 10 
tions would be limited to my own property. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give an outline of Harte's life. 2. Tell something of how the 
miners lived in California. 3. Put into simpler language "the delicacies 
of her larder," "a rosy picture of domestic felicity," "without com- 
mitting any depredation," "a desperate attempt had been made to force 
the till." 

You will be interested in the complete story of Baby Sylvester and 
in "How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar." 



JOAQUIN MILLER 
1841-1913 

Few men have lived a wilder or more exciting life than 
Joaquin Miller. He was born in Indiana in 1841, and when 
nine years old went with his parents to Oregon. That country 
was then an almost unknown land of mountains and forests, 
full of bears, elk, and Indians, with only a few white settlers. 
At thirteen young Miller set out from Oregon, alone, for 
the gold mines of California. On the way he fell in with a 
company of white men, got into a battle with the Indians, 
was shot through with an arrow and was almost killed. An 
old Indian woman who had been captured carried him on 
her back to a place of safety. When he recovered he went to 
Mexico to drive cattle, and while returning was again attacked 
by Indians, struck down with a club, and left for dead. But 
friendly Indians took him to one of their camps and cared for 
him, and he stayed with them until he was strong again. 

Then he lived in a mining camp and washed gold out of 
the sand and dirt by the side of a mountain stream in a deep 
canyon in northern California. This was a rough life, and 
he saw many a terrible fight — too terrible to describe here. 
He helped to rescue an Indian boy and girl whom some of 
the miners were about to kill, and afterwards went with them 
to their people, where he was welcomed and made much of. 

For five years he lived among these Indians, and after a 
time married the Indian girl whom he had saved and who 
had grown up to be a beautiful young woman. He helped 
the tribe to fight their battles against other tribes, some- 
times even fighting with them against the whites, for he 

560 



JOAQUIN MILLER 561 

felt that the Indians had not been treated fairly. His In- 
dian wife was killed as they were crossing a swift river on 
horseback, trying to escape. 

At another time he fought with the whites against the 
Indians, when he felt that the Indians were in the wrong. 
He was for a time an express messenger in Idaho, in the 
days when robbing stagecoaches was a common thing. Then 
he edited a newspaper in Oregon, studied and practiced 
law, and was for five years a county judge. 

In 1870 he went to England, published a book of poems, 
and was received with high honors. Then he spent several 
years in newspaper work in New York and Washington, and 
at last went West again. He had married a second time, 
after his return from among the Indians, and he spent his 
last years quietly with his wife and daughter in Oakland, 
California, where' he died at the age of seventy-one. He 
wrote many poems, stories, and plays, most of them about 
wild life in the early days of the West. His finest short 
poem is " Columbus." When he was a child his parents 
gave him the name Cincinnatus, but he never liked it very 
well, and later in life called himself Joaquin, from the name 
of a Mexican whom he once defended when he was a lawyer 
in Oregon. 

COLUMBUS » 

[We honor Columbus as the discoverer of America, but not for that 
alone. We honor him quite as much because of the difficulties that he 
conquered and the dangers that he overcame. 

In reading this poem think of the story of that dangerous voyage over 
an unknown sea, in the three frail little ships ; think of the fear of the 
sailors, of the winds blowing them always in one direction, away from 
home ; think of the storm, of the calm which held them almost motion- 
less for days, of the mutiny of the crew, of the feeling that they were no 
longer in the world, but in a strange far-off region inhabited perhaps by 

1 Copyright. Harr Wagner Publishing Company. 



562 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

monsters. Yet Columbus never faltered. He had fixed his heart upon 
a great work and nothing could make him turn back. 

Here are two selections from the ship's journal, that will show what 
happened on the last days of the voyage : 

Wednesday, October 10, 14Q2: Sailed west-southwest. . . . Here the crew 
could stand it no longer. They complained of the long voyage, but the Admiral 
encouraged them. . . . And he added that it was useless to murmur, because 
he had come in quest of the Indies, and was going to continue until he found 
them, with God's help. 

Thursday, October 11, 1492 : Sailed west-southwest, and encountered a high 
sea, higher than had been met with hitherto. . . . The Admiral at ten o'clock 
at night, standing on the deck, saw a light, but so indistinct that he did not dare 
to say it was land. . . ' . Two hours after midnight the land appeared two 
leagues off.] 

Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the Gates of Hercules ; 
Before him not the ghost of shores, 

Before him only shoreless seas. 
The good mate said : "Now must we pray, 

For lo ! the very stars are gone. 
Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?" 

"Why, say, ' Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! ' " 



"My men grow mutinous day by day ; 
10 My men grow ghastly wan and weak.' 1 

The stout mate thought of home ; a spray 
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
"What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, 
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
15 "Why, you shall say at break of day, 

' Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " 

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 

Until at last the blanched mate said : 
"Why now, not even God would know 
20 Should I and all my men fall dead. 



JOAQUIN MILLER 563 

These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say" — 

He said : " Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " 

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate : 5 

"This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
He curls his lip, he lies in wait 

With lifted teeth, as if to bite ! 
Brave Admiral, say but one good word : 

What shall we do when hope is gone?" IO 

The words leapt like a leaping sword : 

" Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " 

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 

Of all dark nights ! And then a speck — 15 

A light ! A light ! A light ! A light ! 
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled ! 

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn, 
He gained a world ; he gave that world 

Its grandest lesson : "On ! sail on !" 20 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell something of Joaquin Miller's life. 2. What and where are 
the Azores? Why "gray"? 3. What are the Gates of Hercules? 4. In 
the first stanza, what frightened the mate? Why did the stars seem 
to go out? 5. In line 9, page 562, who is speaking? 6. In the third 
stanza, what frightened the mate? 7. What in the fourth stanza ? (The 
mate is speaking for all the sailors.) 8. In line 6, page 563, to what does 
the mate compare the sea ? What is the curling lip ? the teeth ? 9. What 
was the "one good word"? 10. In line 17, the poet looks forward to 
the time when this new world shall be the home of a great nation; 
the light seems to grow and take the shape of the stars in the American 
flag. "Time's burst of dawn" is the beginning of a new age and a new 
world. What was the great lesson that Columbus gave to the new 
world ? 11. Memorize the poem. 



SIDNEY LANIER 
1842-1881 

Lanier, our leading Southern poet since Poe, was not only 
a poet, but a musician also ; and the musician's instinct 
that was born in him shows in the music of his verse. He 
had the soul of a -hero. Though his life was hemmed in 
by ill health and misfortune, his strong will and his inspira- 
tion made for him an imaginary world of music and beauty 
and love and joy, where he lived and forgot his earthly troubles. 

He was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842, the son of a well- 
to-do lawyer. We are told that among his French-English 
ancestors were several generations of distinguished musi- 
cians, frorh whom he doubtless inherited his musical ability. 
Even when a boy, he played without instruction the flute, 
the violin, the organ, the piano, the guitar, and other in- 
struments. 

When he was only fourteen, he entered Oglethorpe College, 
in Georgia, and on graduating, four years later, continued 
for a time as an instructor. Then came the war, and with 
his younger brother Clifford, he promptly enlisted in the 
Confederate army. He distinguished himself for his bravery 
and was several times offered a position as officer, but he 
declined, feeling that his brother in the ranks needed his care. 
Sidney himself, at the time of his enlistment, was but nine- 
teen. Later, both brothers served for a time as scouts along 
the James, and Sidney wrote that with plenty of excitement, 
good horses, hairbreadth escapes, moonlight nights, and a 
flute and guitar they were thoroughly enjoying their army 
life. But this romance could not last. They were soon 

564 



566 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

afterwards made signal officers on Confederate blockade 
runners operating out of Wilmington, North Carolina, and 
on one of their runs Sidney was captured by a federal vessel 
and confined for five months in prison at Point Lookout. 
His greatest comfort during this time was the flute, which 
he still carried in his pocket, and which cheered both himself 
and his fellow prisoners. 

His imprisonment lasted until the end of the war. Worn, 
weary, and ragged, he was then released with other prisoners 
and set out for home, five hundred miles to the southward, 
on foot, through a country wasted by war. It was a terrible 
journey. Never strong at any time, he had been further 
weakened by his long confinement ; and this tramp through 
rain and heat, without sufficient food or shelter, was the last 
straw, which broke his health. When he reached home he 
was ill with a fever; consumption developed, and he was 
never again physically the same. 

It was necessary, however, for him to earn a living, and 
when his fever left him he went heroically to work. He was 
for a time a hotel clerk, then the principal of a country academy, 
meanwhile spending his leisure in the study of law and in 
writing poetry, some of which was published in various papers, 
adding a few dollars to his scanty income. He also wrote and 
published a romance of the war, which he called " Tiger Lilies," 
but it was only moderately successful, and was soon for- 
gotten. The same year that he published his book he married 
Mary Day, of Macon, a young woman as brave and hopeful 
as himself. 

To please his father he practiced law five years in Macon, 
and was fairly successful, but he did not like it. More and 
more he felt that he must write. At last, in 1873, he deter- 
mined to devote the rest of his life to poetry and music. 
Leaving his family for a time in Macon, he took his flute and 
a change of clothing in his little valise and went north to 
Baltimore, where he succeeded in getting a position in an 



SIDNEY LANIER 567 

orchestra. His genius as a musician enabled him to read 
the most difficult musical scores, and he was soon regarded 
as the best flutist in America. With his first money he 
sent for his family, and made a home for them in Baltimore. 
There he studied literature and soon began to give lectures 
on Old English Poetry. His poems at length attracted 
notice, and in 1876, through his friend Bayard Taylor, he 
was invited to write the Cantata for the opening of the 
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. He worked hard, 
earnestly, and enthusiastically, though he realized that the 
disease which had fastened itself upon him was gradually 
wearing him away, and that he had not long to live. In 
1879 he was appointed lecturer on English Literature in 
Johns Hopkins University, and delivered several memorable 
courses, two of which were afterward published under the 
titles, "The English Novel," and "The Science of English 
Verse." He also wrote a guidebook to Florida, after a trip 
that he had taken thither for his failing health; and he re- 
told for young people the ancient chronicles of England and 
France, in four books, — "The Boys' King Arthur," "The 
Boys' Froissart," "The Boys' Mabinogion," and "The 
Boys' Percy," — the last named published after his death. 
But the most important of his works were the poems, "The 
Song of the Chattahoochee," "Sunrise," and "The Marshes 
of Glynn." 

Just as he began to earn enough to support his family in 
comfort, he found that his work was done. He was then so 
weak that his writing was done in bed, and his last lectures at 
Johns Hopkins were spoken from a reclining chair, and scarcely 
above a whisper. They took him to the pine lands of North 
Carolina in the hope that the change might lengthen out his 
life, but it was useless ; he died among the mountains of the 
Blue Ridge, in the autumn of 1881. 

We think of Lanier as an earnest, unconquerable soul, 
thoroughly in love with his work. His soft gray eyes had 



568 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

in them a depth and earnestness which made him seem inspired. 
Music was a passion with him, and his poems seem almost 
to sing themselves. He was singularly pure and sweet and 
noble, and he feared nothing that the world could do to him. 
In one of his last poems, " Sunrise," he says, in addressing the 
sun: 

. . . Manifold One 
I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the sun. 
Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a frown ; 
The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town : 
But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done : 
I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun : 
How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, 
I am lit with the Sun. 



THE SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE 

[Far up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, near the northern boundary of 
Georgia, rises the Chattahoochee River. Through its upper course, in 
Habersham County, it is a turbulent stream, dashing over stones and 
through mountain gorges, leaping down in waterfalls, split at times by 
the rocks into several channels, but soon rushing together again and 
growing broader and deeper as it flows along. Its course leads then 
through the wooded valleys of Hall and other counties, past villages 
and towns, until on the western border of the state it spreads out into 
the plains, furnishes power for scores of mills, and empties into the 
Apalachicola River, on the edge of Florida, through which it flows on 
into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Lanier knew the Chattahoochee well and loved it. Dancing along 
among the hills and through the valleys, it seemed to him almost human ; 
and he fancied that as it flowed, the rushes and ferns and berries that 
dipped into it or that reached across its way, the trees that bent over 
it, and the stones that stood before it, were trying to stop it and make 
it play with them. But there was work for the river to do. There were 
mills to turn, and fields to water, and beyond all these was ever heard 
the call of the sea. 

The great beauty of the poem lies in the music of its verse. It is not 
only a poem ; it is a song. Think of the river as singing it.] 



SIDNEY LANIER 569 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain, 

Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
Split at the rock and together again, 5 

Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 

And flee from folly on every side, 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain 

Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. 10 

All down the hills of Habersham, 

All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried, " Abide, abide," 

The willful water-weeds held me thrall, 
The laving laurel turned my tide, 15 

The ferns and the fondling grass said, "Stay," 

The dewberry dipped for to work delay, 
And the little reeds sighed, "Abide, abide, 

Here in the hills of Habersham, 

Here in the valleys of Hall." 20 

High o'er the hills of Habersham, 

Veiling the valleys of Hall, 
The hickory told me manifold 

Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall 
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, 25 

The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, 

O'erleaning, with nickering meaning and sign, 
Said, "Pass not, so cold, these manifold 

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, 

These glades in the valleys of Hall." 30 

And oft in the hills of Habersham, 
And oft in the valleys of Hall 



570 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

The white quartz shone and the smooth brook stone 

Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, 
And many a luminous jewel lone — 

Crystal clear or acloud with mist, 
5 Ruby, garnet, and amethyst — ■ 

Made lures with the lights of streaming stone 

In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, 

In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, 
10 And oh, not the valleys of Hall 

Avail : I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call — 
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
i 5 And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 

And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 
Calls through the valleys of Hall. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell the story of Lanier's life. 2. Where is the Chattahoochee 
River? Describe its course and locate it upon a map. 3. What and 
where are Habersham and Hall? 4. Put into simpler words "Accept my 
bed, or narrow or wide." 5. What is meant by "flee from folly"? (Re- 
member that as the stream flows on, it seems to be thinking all the time 
of the work it has to do.) 6. Explain line 8, page 569. (The river is in 
love with its work and impatient to reach the plain where duty calls it.) 

7. What examples of alliteration do you find in the second stanza? 
the third? the fourth? the fifth? 8. Explain "held me thrall," "lav- 
ing laurel," "fondling grass," "for to work delay." (In Old English 
it was customary to use "for to" where now we use only "to.") Find 
another example of this in the poem. 9. What "veiled the valleys" 
in line 22, page 569? 10. Express in simpler words "Wrought me her 
shadowy self to hold," "Pass not, so cold." 11. Explain "flickering 
meaning." 12. "Bar me of passage" is an old English form for "bar my 
passage." Do you think the poem is better or worse for using these old 



SIDNEY LANIER 571 

forms of speech? 13. What is a "friendly brawl" ? a "luminous jewel"? 
14. Put into simpler words "Made lures with the lights of streaming 
stone." (The lights streaming from the stone are meant — lights so 
brilliant that the stone itself seems to stream out with them.) 

15. Rewrite the last stanza in simple prose, explaining "be mixed 
with the main," "mortally yearn." 16. Name all the different things that 
tried to stop the stream. 17. Think of yourself as having a duty to do, and 
mention some things that might try to call you from it. 18. Memorize 
the poem. 19. Compare with Tennyson's "The Song of the Brook" 
(Literary Readers, Book Five, page 212). How are the two poems alike 
and how different ? Notice how Tennyson also uses alliteration. 

Songs of other poets addressed to streams are Burns's "Flow Gently, 
Sweet Afton," Bryant's "The Rivulet," Southey's "The Cataract of 
Lodore," Longfellow's "To the River Charles," Hayne's "The River," 
and Father Ryan's "A Song of the River." 



TAMPA ROBINS 

[This poem was written in Tampa, Florida, toward the end of Lanier's 
life, when he was seeking for a milder climate that would help him through 
the winter. 

He hears the robin singing in the orange tree and thinks the bird is 
laughing at the winds and storms of the North, which he has just escaped. 
The robin seems to say, "While my wings can carry me here, and while 
these orange trees hold out their golden fruit, Time shall bring me only joy . " 

As the poet looks up into the tree, the oranges seem to him like planets 
in a sky of leaves, and the robin, with his crimson breast, like a meteor 
darting among them and leaving behind him a trail of song. "I'll go 
south with the sun," says the robin. "My wings shall carry me where 
I can always find summer. I will hold my red breast up to the sun, like 
a torch, and receive more light and brightness."] 

The robin laughed in the orange tree : 
"Ho, windy North, a fig for thee ! 
While breasts are red and wings are bold 
And green trees wave us globes of gold, 

Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me — 

Sunlight, song, and the orange tree. 



572 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN . 

"Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, 
My orange-planets : crimson I 
Will shine and shoot among the spheres 
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears) 
5 And thrid the heavenly orange tree 

With orbits bright of minstrelsy. 

"I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime; 
My wing is king of the summer time ; 
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold ; 
10 And I'll call down through the green and gold, 

'Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, 
Bestir thee under the orange tree." , 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. What is meant by "Ho, windy North, a fig for thee"? ("A fig" 
here means anything unimportant — "a snap of the fingers.") 2. What 
are the " globes of gold " ? 3. Time is here, as often, represented as an old 
man with a scythe. He is supposed to cut down all living things. What 
will Time's scythe reap for the robin? 4. Explain the second stanza. 
Use simpler words for "blithe," "thrid," "minstrelsy." 5. Explain 
"I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime" (keep the climate I like 
best). 6. Explain how the robin's wing is "king of the summertime." 
7. Why does the robin hold his breast to the sun, and why is his breast 
called a torch ? 

A VOYAGE ON A FLORIDA RIVER 

[From Lanier's "Florida," published in 1875.] 

For a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The 
little Ocklawaha steamboat Marion — a steamboat which is 

T 5 like nothing in the world so much as a Pensacola gopher 
with a preposterously exaggerated back — had started from 
Palatka some hours before daylight, having taken on her 
passengers the night previous ; and by seven o'clock of such 
a May morning as no words could describe, unless words 

20 were themselves May mornings, we had made the twenty-five 



SIDNEY LANIER 573 

miles up the St. Johns, to where the Ocklawaha flows into 
that stream. 

The Ocklawaha is the sweetest water lane in the world, 
a lane which runs for more than a hundred and fifty miles 
of pure delight betwixt hedgerows of oaks and cypresses 5 
and palms and bays and magnolias and mosses and mani- 
fold vine growths, a lane clean to travel along, for there is 
never a speck of dust in it save the blue dust and gold dust 
which the wind blows out of the flags and lilies. 

As we advanced up the stream our wee craft seemed to 10 
emit her steam in more leisurely whiffs. Dick, the pole- 
man, lay asleep on the guards, in great peril of rolling into 
the river over the three inches between his length and the 
edge; the people of the boat moved not and spoke not; 
the white crane, the curlew, the limpkin, the heron, the 15 
water turkey were scarcely disturbed in their quiet avoca- 
tions as we passed, and quickly succeeded in persuading 
themselves after each momentary excitement of our gliding 
by that we were really, after all, no monster, but only some 
daydream of a monster. 20 

"Look at that snake in the water!" said a gentleman, 
as we sat on deck with the engineer, just come up from his 
watch. The engineer smiled. "Sir, it is a water turkey," 
he said gently. 

The water turkey is the most preposterous bird within 25 
the range of ornithology. He is not a bird, he is a neck, 
with such subordinate rights, members, appurtenances, and 
hereditaments thereunto appertaining as seem necessary to 
that end. He has just enough stomach to arrange nourish- 
ment for his neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along 30 
with his neck, and just big enough legs to keep his neck from 
dragging on the ground ; and his neck is light-colored, while 
the rest of him is black. When he saw us he jumped up on a 
limb and stared. Then suddenly he dropped into the water, 
sank like a leaden ball out of sight, and made us think he was 35 



574 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

drowned — when presently the tip of his beak appeared, 
then the length of his neck lay along the surface of the water, 
and in this position, with his body submerged, he shot out 
his neck, drew it back, wriggled it, twisted it, twiddled it, and 
5 spirally poked it into the east, the west, the north, and the 
south, with a violence of involution and a contortionary 
energy that made one think in the same breath of corkscrews 
and of lightnings. But what nonsense ! All that labor and 
perilous asphyxiation — for a beggarly sprat or a couple of 

10 inches of water snake ! 

Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Ocklawaha, at 
the right-hand edge of the stream, is the handsomest resi- 
dence in America. It belongs to a certain alligator of my 
acquaintance, a very honest and worthy saurian, of good 

15 repute. A little cove of water, dark green under the over- 
hanging leaves, placid, pellucid, curves round at the river 
edge into the flags and lilies, with a curve just heartbreaking 
for the pure beauty of it. My saurian, when he desires to 
sleep, has but to lie down anywhere; he will find marvelous 

20 mosses for his mattress beneath him ; his sheets will be white 
lily petals ; and the green disks of the lily pads will straight- 
way embroider themselves together above him for his coverlet. 
He never quarrels with his cook, he is not the slave of a kitchen, 
and his one housemaid — the stream — forever sweeps his 

25 chambers clean. His conservatories, there under the glass 
of that water, are ever and without labor filled with the 
enchantments of strange underwater growths. Upon his 
house the winds have no power, the rains are only a new 
delight to him, and the snows he will never see. 

30 For many miles together the Ocklawaha is a river with- 
out banks, though not less clearly defined as a stream for 
that reason. The swift, deep current meanders between 
tall lines of trees ; beyond these, on each side, there is water 
also — a thousand shallow rivulets lapsing past the bases of 

35 multitudes of trees. 



SIDNEY LANIER 575 

The edges of the stream are further denned by flowers 
and water leaves. The tall, blue flags, the ineffable lilies 
sitting on their round lily pads like white queens on green 
thrones, the tiny stars and long ribbons of the water grasses — 
all these border the river in infinite varieties. 5 

And then, after this day of glory, came a night of glory. 
The stream, which had been all day a baldric of beauty, some- 
times blue and sometimes green, now became a black band of 
mystery. But presently a brilliant flame flares out overhead : 
they have lighted the pine knots on top of the pilot house. 10 
The white columns of the cypress trunks, the silver-embroi- 
dered crowns of the maples, the green and white of the lilies 
along the edges of the stream — these all come in a con- 
tinuous apparition out of the bosom of the darkness and 
retire again. , 15 

And now it is bedtime. Let me tell you how to sleep 
on an Ocklawaha steamer in May. With a small bribe 
persuade Jim, the steward, to take the mattress out of your 
berth and lay it slanting just along the railing that incloses 
the lower part of the deck, in front and to the left of the pilot 20 
house. Lie flat-backed down on the same, draw your blanket 
over you, put your cap on your head in consideration of the 
night air, fold your arms, say some little prayer, and fall 
asleep with a star looking right down your eye. When you 
awake in the morning, you will feel as new as Adam. 25 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Locate on a map the scene of this journey. 2. Define "avoca- 
tions," "involution," "contortionary," "asphyxiation," "saurian," 
"ineffable," "baldric." 3. "With such subordinate rights," etc. is a 
legal phrase. What is the effect of using it here? 4. Select the best 
figures of speech ; the pictures that interest you most. 

Another good prose description from Lanier is "Bob," the mocking 
bird. 



HENRY WOODFIN GRADY 

1851-1889 

Henry W. Grady was one of the most progressive of the 
men who took part in the reconstruction of the South after 
the Civil War. He was born at Athens, Georgia, in 1851 
and received his education at the University of Georgia. It 
was his wish to become a journalist, and with this aim in 
view he began to write, soon after his graduation, a series of 
letters on the resources and possibilities of his native state. 
These letters were published and attracted wide attention. 
He engaged in newspaper work of various kinds and at 
twenty-nine became editor of the Atlanta Constitution, which 
position he held for nine years, until his death, in 1889. He 
was succeeded as editor by Joel Chandler Harris. 

Mr. Grady, besides being a successful newspaper man 
and magazine writer, was also a distinguished orator. The 
subject which lay nearest his heart was the future of the South, 
and most of his more important writings touched upon that 
theme. No other man in the Southern states did more than 
he to harmonize the North and the South after the war was 
over. His speech "The New South," from which this extract 
is taken, was given before the New England Society, in New 
York, in 1886. 

THE NEW SOUTH 

Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, 

as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was 

to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, 

he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 

5 1865. Think of him as, ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, 

576 



HENRY WOODFIN GRADY 577 

enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, 
he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in 
silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last 
time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray 
cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. 5 

What does he find — let me ask you — what does he find 
when, having followed the battle-stained cross against over- 
whelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, 
he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful ? He 
finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his 10 
stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money 
worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept 
away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades 
slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. 
Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without 15 
money, credit, employment, material, or training, and be- 
sides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever 
met human intelligence — the establishing of a status for the 
vast body of his liberated slaves. 

What does he do, this hero in gray, with a heart of gold? 20 
Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. 
Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired 
him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so over- 
whelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped 
from the trenches into the furrow ; horses that had charged 25 
Federal guns marched before the plow ; and fields that ran 
red with human blood in April were green with the harvest 
in June. 

But what is the sum of our work? We have found out 
that the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We 30 
have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop and • made it 
free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities 
in the place of theories, and put business above politics. 

The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul 
is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander 35 



578 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 

day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the con- 
sciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands 
upright, full statured and equal, among the people of the 
earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the ex- 
spanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came 
because, through the inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest 
purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. 

This is said in no spirit of time serving or apology. The 
South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes 

iothat the late struggle between the states was war and not 
rebellion ; revolution and not conspiracy ; and that her con- 
victions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the 
dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if 
I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has 

15 nothing to take back. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Tell what you can of Grady's life. 2. Where and when was 
the address "The New South" delivered? What is meant by "The 
New South " ? 3. In the first paragraph what is meant by the " parole " ? 
4. Explain "having followed the battle-stained cross," "his very tra- 
ditions are gone," "the establishing of a status for the vast body of his 
liberated slaves," "a heart of gold," "sowed towns and cities in the place 
of theories " (Do you prefer " sowed " to " built " ? Why ?) , "enamored of 
her new work" (What was her new work?). 

5. Notice that in the next to the last paragraph the South is per- 
sonified. What does this add to the force of the oration? 6. Explain 
"her soul is'stirred with the breath of a new life," "full statured," "ex- 
panded horizon," "her emancipation," "inscrutable wisdom of God." 
7. Explain "This is said in no spirit of time serving or apology." 

Other poems referring to the end of the war are Father Ryan's "The 
Conquered Banner," Margaret Junkin Preston's "Acceptation," Finch's 
"The Blue and the Gray," Kate Putnam Osgood's "Driving Home the 
Cows," and Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's "Peace." 



HENRY VAN DYKE 

1852- 

It is not often that we find a man so many-sided as Dr. 
van Dyke. As a poet, an essayist, a story-writer, a preacher, 
a college professor, and a diplomat, he has been equally suc- 
cessful, and he is, besides, a first-rate fisherman and an en- 
thusiastic lover of nature. 

Dr. van Dyke was born in Germantown, now a part of 
Philadelphia, in 1852. When he was still quite young the 
family moved to Brooklyn, and there he passed his boy- 
hood. His father was his best friend, and the two spent 
many a holiday together in the country, tramping and fish- 
ing and listening to the birds and the brooks and the wind 
among the pines. 

At sixteen he was ready for college and entered Prince- 
ton, where his father and grandfather had been before him. 
There he distinguished himself as a writer and speaker, 
taking a number of prizes. He graduated from Princeton 
College in 1873 and from Princeton Theological Seminary 
in 1877. Then he spent a year abroad. 

In 1879 he was made pastor of a church in Newport, Rhode 
Island, and four years later went to New York as pastor of the 
Brick Presbyterian Church, where he remained for seventeen 
years. He spent his vacations camping and fishing, and 
wrote "Little Rivers," "Fisherman's Luck," several religious 
books, and his Christmas stories. 

In 1900 he was called to Princeton as professor of English 
literature, and thirteen years later was appointed United 
States minister to the Netherlands. 

579 



580 NINETEENTH CENTURY — AMERICAN 



INDIAN SUMMER 

[The soft dreamy atmosphere of Indian summer makes the poet think 
of the olden times when the Indians roamed these fields. The stacks of 
corn suggest their wigwams, and he seems to see their ghosts stealing 
through the mist of the evening, to hear their whispers in the breeze, 
to see and smell the smoke of their camp fires, as they bring back with 
them all the joy and pain of the Indian life.] 

A soft veil dims the tender skies, 
And half conceals from pensive eyes 

The bronzing tokens of the fall ; 
A calmness broods upon the hills, 
5 And summer's parting dream distills 

A charm of silence over all. 

The stacks of corn, in brown array, 
Stand waiting through the placid day, 

Like tattered wigwams on the plain ; 
10 The tribes that find a shelter there 

Are phantom peoples, forms of air, 

And ghosts of vanished joy and pain. 

At evening, when the crimson crest 
Of sunset passes down the west, 
IS I hear the whispering host returning ; 

, On far-off fields, by elm and oak, 
I see the lights, I smell the smoke — 
The camp fires of the past are burning. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. Give an outline of the life and work of Dr. van Dyke. 2. De- 
scribe in your own words the season of Indian summer. 3. What is 
meant bv " A soft veil dims the tender skies" ? Explain "pensive eyes," 
"bronzing tokens of the fall." 4. What does the word "broods" in 
line 4 suggest to you, and why is it appropriate here? 5- What feeling 
does the phrase "summer's parting dream" awaken in you? What is 



HENRY VAN DYKE 581 

meant by "distills"? (To distill is to change a substance into a vapor 
and let it condense slowly, drop by drop, like the dew. The "charm of 
silence" falls like the dew over the landscape.) 

6. Read the first two stanzas, then shut your eyes and try to see and 
feel the picture — the brown shocks of corn, the soft skies, the peace, 
and the silence. Of what is the poet thinking when he calls the shocks 
"tattered wigwams"? 7. In the last stanza is another picture — 
the cornfield at sunset. What does the poet hear that he calls "the 
whispering host returning"? What does he see and smell that make 
him think of the Indian camp fires? 8. Memorize the poem, and think 
of it when you see a field of shocked corn on a hazy Indian-summer day. 

Another interesting poem by Dr. van Dyke is "The Angler's Reveille." 
Good prose tales are "A Handful of Clay," "The First Christmas Tree," 
and "The Other Wise Man." 

WORK 

Let me but do my work from day to day, 
In field or forest, at the desk or loom, 
In roaring market-place or tranquil room ; 

Let me but find it in my heart to say, 

When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, 

"This is my work ; my blessing, not my doom ; 
Of all who live, I am the one by whom 

This work can best be done in the right way." 

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small, 
To suit my spirit and to prove my powers ; 
Then shall I cheerful greet the laboring hours, 

And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall 

At eventide, to play and love and rest, 

Because I know for me my work is best. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. This poem by Dr. van Dyke is a sonnet. Study the verse form; 
then tell what a sonnet is. (It always has the same number of lines.) 
2. Explain " vagrant wishes." 3. In what ways is work useful ? 



VII. THE LITERATURE OF THE 
GREAT WAR 

WOODROW WILSON 

1856- 

President Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 at Staunton, 
Virginia, — the son of a Presbyterian clergyman; of Scotch- 
Irish descent. When he was about two years old his family 
moved to Augusta, Georgia, and remained there during his 
boyhood, or until he was about fourteen. They then went 
north as far as South Carolina. At seventeen young Woodrow 
entered Davidson College but was soon obliged to give up 
his work on account of ill health. Two years later he entered 
Princeton, with better success, and graduated from there in 
1879. In college he showed unusual literary ability, was a 
fine debater, and editor of the college paper. After gradua- 
tion he studied law, took up post-graduate work at Johns 
Hopkins University and taught five years at Bryn Mawr 
and at Wesley an University, in Connecticut. Then he re- 
turned to Princeton as Professor of Political Economy and 
twelve years later was made president of the university. 

In 1910 he was elected governor of New Jersey. His admin- 
istration was strong and clean and brought about so many 
needed reforms that in 191 2 he was urged as a candidate for 
the presidency of the United States, to succeed William II . 
Taft, — and elected. 

His writings include " Congressional Government, " ' The 
State," a "History of the American People," and a life of 

582 



WOODROW WILSON 583 

Washington, besides many essays and important state papers. 
His papers concerning the World War have been read in all 
the countries of the earth and have brought him a fame and 
authority such as is possessed by few other statesmen of the 
present age. 

A WAR FOR DEMOCRACY 

[The following selection consists of several extracts from President 
Wilson's message to Congress of April 2, 191 7, recommending that action 
be taken declaring war between the United States and Germany.] 

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been 
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us 
very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other 
neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed 
in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimina- 5 
tion. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must 
decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for 
ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a 
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our 
motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our 10 
motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the 
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of 
right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical 
character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibili- 15 
ties which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what 
I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress 
declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government 
to be in fact nothing less than war against the govern- 
ment and people of the United States ; that it formally accept 20 
the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it ; 
and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country 
in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its 



584 THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

power and employ all its resources to bring the Government 
of the German Empire to terms and end the war. . . . 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no 
feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. 
5 It was not upon their impulse that their government acted 
in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge 
or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to 
be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples 
were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were pro- 

10 voked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups 
of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow 
men as pawns and tools. Self -governed nations do not fill 
their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue 
to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will 

15 give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such 
designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and 
where no one has the right to ask questions. . . . 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained 
except by a partnership of democratic nations. No auto- 

2ocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it 
or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a 
partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away ; 
the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would 
and render account to no one would be a corruption seated 

25 at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose 

and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the 

interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. . . . 

We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural 

foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force 

30 of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. 
We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false 
pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of 
the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
peoples included ; for the rights of nations great and 



WOODROW WILSON 585 

small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their 
way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe 
for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested 
foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to 
serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no 5 
indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the 
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- 
pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when 
those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the 
freedom of nations can make them. ... IO 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the 
Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. 
There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and 
sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this 
great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and 15 
disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in 
the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and 
we shall fight for the things which we have always carried 
nearest our hearts, — for democracy, for the right of those 
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern- 20 
ments, for the rights and liberties of small nations,' for a uni- 
versal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples 
as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the 
world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our 
lives and our fortunes everything that we are and everything 25 
that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day 
has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness 
and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, 
she can do no other. 30 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

1. Give a brief sketch of President Wilson's life. 2. Where and when 
was this message delivered, and for what purpose? Describe briefly 
what you think might have been the surroundings, or scene. 3. What 



586 THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

did the Imperial German Government do that was the immediate cause 
of this message? 4. Explain "status of belligerent." 5. How was the 
war determined upon in Germany? (The German constitution gave 
to the Emperor and Bundesrath — a body appointed by the rulers of 
the various states of Germany — power to declare war. The people 
had no voice in the matter.) 6. Explain the figure in "pawns." 

7. Why are only free peoples competent to serve the interests of man- 
kind? 8. What is meant by "The world must be made safe for democ- 
racy"? (This phrase became famous and was taken as the watchword 
for the Allies.) 9. What are indemnities? 10. Explain the figure in 
"champion." 11. State briefly the things that America went into the 
war to accomplish, as set forth in President Wilson's message. 



RUPERT BROOKE 
i 887-1915 

Rupert Brooke was born in Rugby, England, and at the 
beginning of the war was a Fellow of King's College, Cam- 
bridge, — an earnest young scholar and idealist of twenty- 
seven. He enlisted promptly and was made a Sub-Lieutenant 
in the Royal Naval Reserve. In the autumn of 1914 he 
went with the expedition against Antwerp, and the follow- 
ing February sailed for Gallipoli with the ill-fated British 
Expeditionary Force. He died on the ^Egean Sea in April 
and was buried on the island of Skyros. His war poetry ranks 
among the finest inspired by the great world-conflict and is 
published under the title "1914 and Other Poems." 

THE SOLDIER 

If I should die, think only this of me : 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 
That is forever England. There shall be 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed ; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 

And think : this heart, all evil shed away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less, 

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given ; 

587 



588 THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

Her sights and sounds ; dreams happy as her day ; 
And laughter, learnt of friends ; and gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 



QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. What is meant by " There's some corner of a foreign field that is 
forever England"? 2. Explain "a pulse in the eternal mind," and 
"gives somewhere back the thoughts." 3. What is the prevailing thought 
of the poem ? Is there anything warlike in it ? 4. Compare the verse 
form with that of Dr. van Dyke's "Work," on page 581. What is'it 
called ? 



ALAN SEEGER 
i 888-1916 

Alan Seeger was an American, — and a year younger than 
Brooke. He was born in New York City, educated at Har- 
vard University, and in 191 2 went to Paris as a student and 
writer. Early in the war he enlisted in the Foreign Legion — 
an organization of eager young patriots from all parts of the 
world who volunteered to assist France in her battles against 
the enemy. He took part in the battle of Champagne and 
on the fourth of July, 19 16, his regiment was ordered to 
advance against the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. In this 
engagement he was severely wounded but urged on the men 
of his squad to a victorious charge. The following morning 
he died from his wounds. During the war he wrote some 
twenty poems, which are included in the volume " Poems by 
Alan Seeger." 

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH 

I have a rendezvous with Death 
At some disputed barricade, 
When Spring comes back with rustling shade 
And apple-blossoms fill the air — 
I have a rendezvous with Death 
When Spring brings back blue days and fair. 

It may be he shall take my hand 
And lead me into his dark land 
And close my eyes and quench my breath — 
It may be I shall pass him still. 
5S9 



59© THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

I have a rendezvous with Death 
On some scarred slope of battered hill, 
When Spring comes round again this year 
And the first meadow-flowers appear. 

5 God knows 't were better to be deep 

Pillowed in silk and scented down, 
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep 
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . 

10 But I've a rendezvous with Death 

At midnight in some flaming town, 
When Spring trips north again this year, 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous. 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. What is a rendezvous? 2. Why " when Spring comes back"? 
(This was written during the winter, when military operations had been 
for a time suspended. The poet was looking forward to the spring cam- 
paign.) 3. Explain the first four lines of the second stanza. Do you 
think the writer expected to be killed ? 4. What do the first lines of the 
third stanza tell you of his feeling for war? What was the feeling that 
inspired him and urged him on ? 5. Note the seriousness of all this war 
poetry, and the thought of sacrifice and death, and duty, instead of 
military glory. What does it tell you of the spirit with which the 
Allies fought ? 6. What does this spirit tell you of the state of civiliza- 
tion and human thought, as compared with that of five hundred years 
before ? 



JOHN McCRAE 

McCrae was a distinguished Canadian physician who 
volunteered soon after the beginning of the war and was 
assigned to hospital duty with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. 
His hospital was near the front, and for many months he was 
under a terrific strain, providing for the wounded soldiers who 
were brought in in greater numbers than it was possible to 
serve them. Worn out at last by his ceaseless labor, he was 
seized with an attack of pneumonia, from which he did not 
recover. The poem below was written at some time during the 
war ; it is not known when or how he found time to write it. 



IN FLANDERS FIELDS 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 

That mark oar place ; and in the sky 

The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. s 

We are the dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe : 10 

To you from failing hands we throw 
The torch ; be yours to hold it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 

In Flanders fields. is 

591 



592 THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR 

QUESTIONS AND HELPS 

i. What effect has the description of the peaceful scene in the first 
four lines upon the remainder of the poem? 2. What were the 
crosses in the second line? 3. In what position does the poet imagine 
himself? 4. Do the last six lines express a feeling of revenge toward the 
enemy or a passionate longing to see the- ideals for which the poet was 
fighting carried out? 5. What figure in "the torch," line 12? 6. This 
verse form is known as the rondeau. Where are the rimes ? Note that 
the entire poem is held together by the rime arrangement. What is the 
effect of the repetition of the line " In Flanders fields " ? 

AMERICA'S ANSWER 

[As an answer to Colonel McCrae's moving poem, the following, by 
R. W. Lillard, an American writer, appeared in 1918, in the New York 
Evening Post.] 

Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead ; 
The fight that ye so bravely led 
We've taken up. And we will keep 
True faith with you who lie asleep 
With each a cross to mark his bed, 

And poppies blowing overhead, 
Where once his own life blood ran red. 
So let your rest be sweet and deep 
In Flanders fields. 

Fear not that ye have died for naught ; 
The torch ye threw to us we caught : 
Ten million hands will hold it high, 
And Freedom's light shall never die ! 
We've learned the lesson that ye taught 
In Flanders fields. 



VOCABULARY 



THE SOUNDS OF THE LETTERS 



WITH KEY TO MARKS USED IN THE VOCABULARY 



a as in name ( = e) 
a as in senate 
a, as in care ( = e) 
a as in fat 
a as in account 
a as in arm 
a as in ask 
a as in sofd 
a as in coward ( = e 
= I=3=u=y) 
a as in what (=6) 
a as in all ( = au = 6) 

e as in evening ( = i") 
e" as in event 
e as in bed 
e as in decent 
§ as in her (=1 = 5 
= u = y = 5) 

9 as in mice ( = s) 
eh as in -ehorus ( = 
ch as in chaise ( = 
g as in cage ( = j) 
djl as in verdure 
tu as in nature 



e as in prey ( = a) 
e as in where (= a) 
ee as in feet (= e) 
ew as in dew ( = u) 

I as in ice ( = y) 
l as in it ( = y) 
l as in machine ( = e) 
T as in sir ( = 5 = u = y 
= a = e) 

o as in old (= ow) 

6 as in obey 

6 as in h6rse (= a) 

6 as in not (= a) 

o as in connect 

o as in soft 

o as in wolf ( = do = u) 

o as in move ( = oo = u) 

6 as in son (= u) 



o as in work ( = u = y 

= a = e = T) 
oo as in food ( = o = u) 
oo as in foot ( = o = u) 

ti as in use ( = ew) 

u as in unite 

u as in fur ( = a = e = I 

= 5=y) 
ii as in up (= 6) 
u as in circws 
ti as in German grun 
u as in rule (= oo = o) 
u as in pull ( = oo = o) 

y as in fly ( = T) 

y as in myth ( — I) 

y as in myrrh ( = a = e 

= I = 5 = u) 



k) 
3h) 



n as in ink (= ng) 

§ as in i§ ( = z) 

5 as in e^act (= gz) 

fh as in fhen 

n as in the French ensemble 

k as in the German ich. ach 



When not marked, c is sounded as in cat ( = k) ; ch as in child ; g as in go ; 
ph as in phantom (= f); qu as in quit (= kw) ; s as in so ; th as in thin ; 
x as in vex ; ou as in out ( = ow) ; oi as in oil ( = oy). 

Sometimes ci and ti have the sound of sh, as in gracious, nation. 

Letters printed in italic type (a, e, i), without marks, are not sounded. 

594 



VOCABULARY 



access (ac'cess) : approach. 

acclamations (ac eld ma'tions) : loud 
cheers, or shouts of applause. 

accosted : addressed, greeted. 

acme (ac'me) : the highest point of 
attainment. 

adder's tongue : the dogtooth violet. 

addled : muddled, spoiled. 

adherent (ad her'ent) : a follower. 

adjuration : a solemn appeal. 

Adrammelech (d dram'rae lech) : a 
son of Sennacherib. 

adversity (ad ver'si tf) : misfortune, 
affliction, often poverty. 

ELWa. (al'ld) : an ancient British 
king. 

aerial (a e'ri dl) : airy. 

affect : to have a liking for. 

affronted : offended, insulted. 

aggregation (&g git ga'tion) : a col- 
lection. 

aghast (d gMst') : terrified, amazed. 

aglee (d glee') : full of glee. 

agrimony (ag'ri mo nf) : a yellow- 
flowered herb with a burlikecalyx. 

aid-de-camp (aid' d£ camp' or aid'- 
de-caV) : an officer who accom- 
panies a general as his personal 
assistant. 

alacrity (d lac'ri ty) : a cheerful read- 
iness, or promptness. 

albatross (al'bd truss) : a sea bird 
common in the southern oceans. 

Albyn (al'byn) : a name for Scot- 
land. 



alternative (al ter'nd tive) : a choice 
between two things. 

amain (d main') : with full force. 

ambrosial (am bro'zhl dl) : sweet, 
delicious. (From " ambrosia," 
the food of the Greek gods.) 

Amherst (am'/ierst) : a town and 
college in Massachusetts. 

amphitheater (am fi the'd ter) : a 
circular or elliptical building with 
banks of seats sloping down to an 
open space in the center. 

Amun (a'mun) : an Egyptian god rep- 
resented with the head of a ram. 

Andromeda (an drom'e dd) : a north- 
ern constellation directly south 
of Cassiopeia. 

Angelus (an'ge" lws) : a bell rung at 
morning, noon, and night, as a 
call to a form of prayer also 
called the Angelus. 

annihilation (an nl hi la'tion) : an 
utter destruction. 

antediluvian (an te" di lu'vi dn) : be- 
fore the flood. 

Anthony's Nose : a promontory on 
the Hudson, so called from a 
trumpeter of Governor Stuyve- 
sant's (Knickerbocker, History 
of New York, Book VI, chap. iv). 

antipathy (an tip' d thy) : dislike. 

apprehend (apprehend') : to fear. 

arabesque (ar a besk') : a kind of 
decoration in which foliage is 
prominently used. 



595 



596 



VOCABULARY 



Ardennes (ar dennes') : a forest in 

France. 
Argus : a Greek demigod who had 

a hundred eyes, some of which 

were always open. 
Ariel (a'ri el) : a spirit of the air, 

in " The Tempest." 
armada (ar ma'dd) : a fleet of armed 

ships, 
arquebuse (ar'que buse) : a heavy 

old-fashioned matchlock firearm. 
Ashur (a'shur) : the chief god of 

the Assyrians ; used on page 157 

for the country Assyria. 
aspects (as'pects) : in astrology the 

influence of the planets for good 

or evil (page 225). 
assize-town : a town where assizes, 

or sessions of the county courts 

in England, are held, 
asthmatic (&§ mafic) : affected with 

asthma ; wheezy, 
aurigation : the act of driving a 

chariot, 
austere (aits tere') : stern, severe. 
Ave Maria (a'va ma re'a) : "Hail, 

Mary ! " the first words of the 

salutation given to Mary by the 

angel Gabriel. The entire salu- 
tation is used as a prayer in the 

Catholic Church, 
aver (d ver') : to affirm, to declare. 

Baal (ba'dl) : a god of the Eastern 

nations. 
badine (ba dine') : a light cane or 

rod. 
Baiae (ba'ye) : an ancient Roman 

city near Naples now called Baja 

(ba'ya). 
baldric (bal'dric) : a belt or girdle. 
balsa (b&l'sd) : a raft or float, 
barouche (bd rouche') : a low-bodied 



carriage with a folding top, hav- 
ing two inside seats, facing each 
other, and an upper, outside seat 
for the driver. 

barracoon (bar rd coon') : a tempo- 
rary barrack for slaves. 

bas-relief (bas'-re" lief : sculpture 
in which the figure projects but 
slightly from the background. 

Bassa (bds'sa) : pasha, a Turkish 
ruler. 

Bastille (bastille'): a fortress and 
prison in Paris. 

bastion : a part of a fortification 
extending outward from the 
main inclosure and consisting of 
two faces meeting at an angle. 

bateau (bato'): a flat-bottomed 
boat, tapering towards both ends. 

bateaux (batoz') : plural of " ba- 
teau." 

beard : to seize by the beard ; 
hence, to defy (page 129). 

beget (be get') : to be the father of. 

behest: command. 

Beledeljereed (bel'ed el je reed') : a 
name formerly given to a part 
of the Barbary states. 

Belle Aurore (bel' 6 rdre') : French 
for " beautiful Aurora." 

belligerent (bel lig'er ent) : at war. 

belly: to bulge or swell out, as a 
flag or sail in the wind. 

benedicite (ben e" dic/i te) : a bless- 
ing. 

berline (berime'): a four-wheeled 
carriage with a sheltered seat 
behind. 

bilberry: the huckleberry. 

billet (bil'tet) : a small stick of 
wood. 

biped (bi'ped) : a two-footed ani- 
mal. 



VOCABULARY 



597 



Bliicher (blu'ker or blu'cher) : a 
Prussian general. 

boatswain (boat'swain or bo's'n) : 
a ship's officer having charge of 
the rigging, anchors, and cord- 
age. 

boding (bod'ing) : foreboding, fore- 
telling. 

Boisot (bwa'so') : a Dutch navaj 
officer. 

Boswell (bo§'weU) : Dr. Johnson's 
biographer. 

bourn or bourne (bourn) : a bound, 
a limit. 

Brabant (bra bant') : an old duchy 
in the Netherlands and Belgium. 

brand : a sword. 

Breton (bre'twn) : of Brittany. 

buckler: a shield ; to "give the 
bucklers " is to yield oneself as 
defeated. 

buff coat : a thick leather coat. 

bunchberry : the fruit of the dwarf 
cornel. 

burden : the chorus or refrain of a 
song (page 175). 

burgesses (bur'ges se§) : the free- 
men or citizens of a town. 

buskin : a high shoe or half boot. 

Byrne (byrne) : an Irish name. 

Bysshe (bysshe) : an English name. 

calumet: the peace pipe of the 
Indians. 

Campania (cam pa'ni d) : a sea- 
coast division of Italy in which 
is the modern Naples. 

canaille (ca/na/y' or cd nal') : the 
rabble ; the lowest class of people. 

cantata (can ta'td) : a lyric poem 
or story set to music; a short 
oratorio. 

cany (can'y) : canelike, light. 



Capri (ca'pre) : an island in the 
Bay of Naples. 

Carrousel (car'rodsel') : Place du 
Carrousel, the open space ex- 
tending along the eastern court 
of the Tuileries in Paris. It was 
used for royal games. The name 
means " a tilt." 

casque (cask) : a helmet. 

catchfly : a plant having a sticky 
juice which holds small insects. 

cavalcade (cav'dl cade') : a parade, 
usually of horsemen. 

cavernous (cav'er nous) : cavelike, 
or filled with caves. 

celestial concave : the dome or 
expanse of the heavens. 

cenotaph (gen'o taph) : an empty 
tomb. 

cerulean (§e ru'l& an) : sky-blue. 

chagrin (ehd grin') : anxiety, vexa- 
tion. 

chalice (chal'ice) : a goblet, espe- 
cially one used in the com- 
munion service. 

champaign (cMm pai^n') : a plain. 

Chatillon (sha'te'ydN) : a French 
name ; Parkman's guide. 

cheek strap : the part of a bridle 
which passes down the side of 
the horse's head, connecting the 
headstall with the bit or nose- 
band. 

Cheyne (chey'nt) Row: a row of 
houses in Chelsea, London. 

childing (child'ing) : about to give 
birth to a child. 

Chillon (she'yoN') : a fortress in 
Switzerland. 

choleric (chdl'er Ic) : hot-tempered. 

churn boots : boots with high, stiff 
tops, so called from their resem- 
blance to a churn. 



598 



VOCABULARY 



clairvoyant: clear-sighted, having 
insight or divination. 

Clichy (cle'she') : a suburb of 
Paris. 

clift : old English for cliff. 

clomb : old English for climbed. 

clout : the center of a target. 

Clusium (chi'zhi urn) : one of the 
twelve cities of the Etruscan 
confederation. 

cockade (cock ade') : a rosette or 
similar device worn on the hat as 
a badge. 

comely (come'ly) : pleasing in per- 
son or manner. 

Comitium (co niish'i um) : a space 
in the Roman Forum set apart 
for civil and political business. 

complaisant (com'plaiganf) : gra- 
cious, polite. 

composing stick: a small metal 
tray in which type is set. It is 
held in the hand, and when full 
the type is transferred to a larger 
tray called a galley. 

compositor (com po§'i tor) : a type- 
setter. 

compromising (com'pro mi§ ing) : in- 
jurious to one's reputation. 

Comus (co'mws) : the spirit of 
mirth. 

concentered (con cen'tSred) : drawn 
or directed towards a center. 

condolence (con do'lence) : sym- 
pathy. 

confluence : a flowing together. 

conjecture (con jec'tftre) : guess. 

connubial (con nu'bi dl) : pertain- 
ing to a husband and wife, matri- 
monial. 

conservative (con sgrv'd tive) : op- 
posed to change. 

considerations : reasons. 



consort (con'sSrt) : a companion, 
used of a wife or husband. 

constituted (con'sti tut ed) : formed, 
made up. 

constrained : compelled, obliged. 

consul (con'sul) : one of the two 
chief magistrates of the Roman 
republic. 
% consummate (con siini'raate) : of the 
highest quality. 

consummate (con'sum mate) : to 
complete. 

contrite (con'trlte) : broken down 
with grief and penitence. 

convex (con'vex) : rounded out- 
ward. 

convulsively : with convulsions or 
spasms. 

copiousness (co'-pi ous ness) : full- 
ness. 

coranto (co ran 'to) : an ancient 
lively dance. 

corbel (cdr'bel) : a bracket project- 
ing from a wall to support a 
beam, arch, or ceiling. 

Cordilleras (c6r dil ya'rd§) : the great 
mountain range which forms the 
backbone of the Western conti- 
nent. 

Cordovan (cdr'do van) : leather goat- 
skin tanned in Cordova. 

corselet (cCrse'let) : a light breast- 
plate. 

cotter : a cottager, a peasant. 

counter : that part of the stern of 
a boat between the water line and 
extreme overhang (page 400). 

counterpart : a person or thing very 
like another. 

courier (cou'ri er) : a servant who 
makes traveling arrangements. 

courser (c5r'sSr) : a swift horse. 

covert (cov'ert) : a thicket. 



VOCABULARY 



599 



crackling : the crisp, browned rind 
of roast pork (page 136). 

Craigenputtoch (craig en put'ioK) : a 
farm near Dumfries, Scotland; 
Carlyle's home. 

crane : a swinging iron arm at- 
tached to the side or back of a 
fireplace for supporting kettles 
over the fire. 

craven (cra'ven) : a coward. 

crier (cri'er) : a town officer who 
went through the streets making 
proclamation of sales, strayed 
animals or children, etc. 

critical: decisive. 

croft : a small inclosed field, a gar- 
den. 

Croisic (krwa'zec') : a town on the 
coast of France. 

Croisickese (krwa ze ke§') : a na- 
tive of Croisic. 

crone : used on page 409 for 
" crony," a chum. 

croup : a horse's back behind the 
saddle (page 274). 

crypt (crypt) : an underground 
chamber used either as a chapel 
or a tomb. 

culling his phrases : choosing his 
words, speaking carefully. 

cupidity (cu pid'i ty) : greed for 
wealth. 

curaca (cu ra'ca) : the native ruler 
of a Peruvian province or district. 

currently : commonly, generally. 

Damascus : a fine steel made in 
Damascus. The blades of Da- 
mascus swords were engraved 
with various designs. 

Damfreville (dam'fre ville') : the 
commander of a portion of the 
French fleet in 1692. 



dank (dank) : damp or moist. 

dauphin (dau'phin) : the title of 
the eldest son of the king of 
France. 

deal: pine. 

dearth (dearth) : scarcity. 

death-fires : a kind of will o' the 
wisp seen at sea and supposed by 
superstitious sailors to foretell 
death. 

decamp (de" camp') : to depart sud- 
denly. 

deflowered : robbed of its flowers. 

deft : dexterous, handy. 

demented : insane, of unsound 
mind. 

denominated : named, designated. 

depreciatingly (de pre'shi a ting ly) : 
disparagingly, in a way which 
tends to belittle. 

depredation (dep re" da/tion) : a 
plundering. 

de Ros (de ro') : a French name. 

descry (de scry') : to spy, to catch 
sight of. 

despicable (des'pi cd ble) : con- 
temptible. 

detention (de" ten'tion) : a hinder- 
ing or keeping back. 

deus ex machina (de'us ex mak'- 
i' nd) : a person suddenly intro- 
duced to solve a difficulty. It 
refers to a custom in the 
Greek theater of bringing in a 
god by stage machinery to un- 
tangle a difficult situation. The 
words mean " a god from a 
machine." (Latin.) 

devoted (d£ vot'6d) : doomed (page 

344)- 

dexterity (dex ter'I ty) : skill. 

diablerie (di a'ble rl) : deviltry, mis- 
chief. 



6oo 



VOCABULARY 



dialect (di'd lect) : a form of speech 
peculiar to the people of a cer- 
tain locality or class. 

dickering (dick'er ing) : the act of 
bargaining. 

diffused : spread abroad. 

discomfited (dis com'fit ed) : balked, 
thrown into perplexity. 

discomfiture (dis com'fi tare) : con- 
fusion, defeat. 

discredited: disgraced, not believed. 

discreet (dis creet') : prudent. 

disembogue (dis em bogue') : to 
pour out or empty at the mouth. 

disengaged : loosened, freed. 

dissevering (dis sev'er ing) : sepa- 
rating, disuniting. 

dissipate (dis'si pate) : to scatter. 

dissonant (dis'so ndnt) : discordant. 

distill (dis tiW) : to change into 
vapor and then allow to fall in 
drops. 

ditty : a short and simple song. 

doggerel : mean, poor ; usually ap- 
plied to verse. 

domestic: pertaining to a home, 
homelike. 

Dominie (d5m'i nie) : an old title 
applied to a schoolmaster or 
clergyman. 

Donegild (don'£ gild) : a character 
in the " Canterbury Tales." 

doublet (doublet) : a close-fitting 
jacket extending a little below 
the waist. 

down : a tract of open upland. 

dragoon (drd goon') : a cavalry 
soldier. 

dramatic (dm m&t'ic) : vivid, like a 
play. 

dryad (dry 'id ^ : a wood nymph. 

Dumfries (dum fries') : a town in 
Scotland. 



Duquesne (du kan') : a fort at the 

junction of the Ohio and Monon- 

gahela rivers. 
duties : taxes paid on articles 

brought from one country into 

another, 
dynasty (dy'nds ty) : a succession of 

rulers belonging to the same family. 

Ecclefechan (ec c\e fen/an) : a vil- 
lage in Scotland ; Carlyle's birth- 
place. 

eftsoons : again, a second time. 

ejaculated : exclaimed. 

element : according to the ancients, 
one of the four forms of matter : 
air, earth, fire, and water. 

emblazon (em bla'zon) : to decorate 
in bright colors. 

emissary (em 'is sa ry) : a secret 
agent sent out to obtain informa- 
tion or fulfill some mission. 

emulation (em u la'tion) : rivalry, 
ambition to excel. 

enamored (en am'ored) : in love. 

entree (aVtra/) : the right to enter 
(page 288). 

epicurean (usually ep 1 cu re'dn, but 
on page 408 ep 1 cu'r£ an) : one 
who is particular in selecting his 
food. 

equable (e'qud ble or gk'wd ble) : 
uniform, even. 

equinoctial (e'qui n5c'shdl) : per- 
taining to the equinox, used es- 
pecially of the heavy rains which 
occur then. 

equinox (e'qui nox) : the time when 
the days and nights are of equal 
length. The vernal equinox is 
March 21 and the autumnal 
equinox, September 22. 

equipage (ek'wi p&ge) : a carriage. 



VOCABULARY 



60 1 



Este (6s'te) : a town in Italy. 

ether (e'ther) : the upper sky. 

etherealized (ethe're alized) : made 
spiritual or spiritlike. 

Eton (e'ton) : a boy's school or col- 
lege in England. 

Etruscans (e tras'can§) : the in- 
habitants of ancient Etruria, 
now Tuscany. 

euphony (eu'pho ny) : a sweet or 
musical sound. 

evolution (ev 6 lu'tion) : a compli- 
cated movement or series of 
movements. 

expedient (ex pe'di ent) : a means 
devised to accomplish a thing. 

expiate (ex'pi ate) : to atone for, 
to make amends for. 

expostulation (ex pos tu la'tion) : a 
remonstrance, a protest. 



flotilla : a small fleet. 

foible (foi'ble) : a weakness, a fail- 
ing. 

font : an assortment of type of one 
size and style, having a fixed pro- 
portion of various letters and 
signs. 

founder : to sink ; to fail. 

fowling-piece : a light gun used for 
shooting birds. 

fraught: freighted, filled, bur- 
dened. 

frigate : a sail-rigged war vessel. 

furze : a spring shrub with yellow 
flowers. 

fusil (fu'gil) : a light flintlock mus- 
ket. 

fusillade (fu §11 lade') : a discharge 
of many firearms at the same 
time. 



facade (id sad') : the front of a 

building. 
fain: eager, desirous. 
Falerii (fa le'ri 1) : an old Etruscan 

city on the site of the modern 

Civita Castellana. 
familiar: (noun) a companion, a 

member of a family or household, 
fantasies (fa-n'td sie§) : imaginings, 

fancies, false appearances. 
fantoccini (fan to chi'ni) : puppets 

(Italian) . 
fare : the passengers (either one or 

more) in a public vehicle. 
farrowed: gave birth to (used of 

animals that produce several 

young at one time). 
fawn : to seek favor by a cringing, 

servile manner. 
felon : a criminal, 
firmament (f Ir'md ment) : the vault 

or arch of the heavens. 



gainsay : to contradict, to deny. 

gala (ga'ld) : a festival. 

gallant (gal lant/) : a gay, fashion- 
able young man. 

Gamelyn (gam'e lyn) : a character 
in the " Canterbury Tales." 

garcon (gar'sdN 7 ) : French for "boy." 

gauntlet : a mailed glove covering 
part of the arm. 

generated (gen'er at 6d) : born or 
brought into being. 

Gentile (gen'tile) : a name used by 
the Jews for those of any other 
race. 

Geoffrey Chaucer (geof'/rey chan- 
cer) : English author, 1 340-1 400. 

ghoul (gool) : an imaginary evil 
being who was said to rob 
graves. 

gig : a light two-wheeled carriage 
drawn by one horse. 

gleeds : live coals. 



602 



VOCABULARY 



Gloriana (glo ri a'nd) : the Fairy 

Queen, in Spenser's poem of that 

name. 
Goldinge (gold'inge) : an English 

translator of the classics, who 

lived during the reign of Eliza- 
beth. 
Gonzalo (gon za'lo) : a counselor 

of Milan, in " The Tempest." 
gosling green: a pale yellowish 

green. 
Gouvion (gou'vyoN') : a marshal, 

or high military officer, of 

France. 
Grand Pre (graN'pra') : a village 

in Nova Scotia. 
grange (grange) : a farm. 
grene shawe (gre'ne sha'we) : old 

English for " greenwood." 
Greve (grav) : the sandy beach of 

the river back of St. Malo, in 

France. 
groin : to build in groins ; that is, 

in crossed or intersecting vaults 

of masonry. 
Guayaquil (gwy a Ml') : a city and 

gulf on the west coast of South 

America. 
Guerriere (gar ryar') : a British 

frigate in the War of 1812. 
gunwale (gQn'el) : the upper edge 

of a boat's side. 
gyrating (gy'rat ing) : revolving or 

turning spirally about an axis. 

habiliments (hd bil'i m<Tnts) : dress, 

clothing, 
haemony (hae'm6 ny) : a mythical 

plant. 
Hainault (e no') : an old province 

occupying southwest Belgium 

and northeast France. 
halcyon (hal'cy on) : calm, peaceful. 



hammercloth : the ornamental 
cloth formerly thrown over the 
driver's seat of a coach. 

hanger: a short broadsword sus- 
pended from the side. 

harbinger (har'bin ger) : a fore- 
runner. 

harem (ha/rem) : a family of wives, 
as in Mohammedan countries. 

harpies: mythical monsters that 
snatched away the property or 
the souls of their victims. 

Hastings (has'tingg) : the battle in 
1066 in which William the Con- 
queror defeated Harold and con- 
quered England. 

haversack (hav'er sack) : a bag or 
case for carrying provisions. 

heath (heath) : a tract of waste 
land. 

Hengist (hen'gist) : a chief of the 
Jutes. 

henpecked : domineered or ruled 
over by one's wife. 

Herminius (her min'i us) : one of 
the companions of Horatius. 

Herve Riel (Mr've' ri el') : a Breton 
sailor who saved the French fleet 
in 1692. 

higgle : to dispute about the price 
of a thing. 

hinds (hlnd§) : peasants. 

Hogue (hbgue) : a French harbor 
on the English Channel. 

Hollands : a gin made in Hol- 
land. 

hollowed : hallooed, called aloud. 

holster (hdl'ster) : a leather pistol 
case. 

Horatius Codes (h5 ra'shi its c5'- 
cle§) : a Roman hero who saved 
Rome by defending a bridge 
against the Etruscan army. 



VOCABULARY 



603 



hostel (hos'tel) : an inn. 

Ho-ti (ho ti') : a Chinese name. 

Huguenot (hu gue not) : a French 
Protestant of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. 

hurtling : crashing. 

hymenaeal (hy me ne'dl) : pertain- 
ing to marriage. 

identified (I den'ti fled) : proved to 
be the same. 

identity (i den'ti ty) : the condition 
of being one's self. 

idyl (I'dyl) : a simple description 
or picture of country life. 

illusion (U hVgion) : an unreal or 
misleading appearance. 

II Penseroso (H pen se rS'so) : " the 
meditative or thoughtful one " ; 
a poem by Milton. 

Ilva: the ancient name of Elba, 
famed for its iron mines. 

imbued : saturated, filled. 

imminence (lm'mi nehce) : the con- 
dition of impending or being 
about to happen. 

impetus (Im'pe tus) : momentum ; 
the energy with which a thing 
moves or is driven. 

inanimate (in an'i mate) : without life. 

Inca (In'kd) : the title of the ruler 
of ancient Peru. 

incendiary (In cen'di a ry) : one 
who burns the house or property 
of another. 

inclemency (in clem en cy) : harsh- 
ness, severity. 

inconsiderable : trivial, small. 

incursion (in cur'gion) : a raid. 

indefatigable (in de fat'i gd ble): tire- 
less. 

indemnities (in dem'ni tie§) : com- 
pensation for damages. 



ineffable : beyond expression. 

inevitable (in ev'i td ble) : unavoid- 
able. 

inexorable (in ex'6 rd ble) : deter- 
mined, not to be moved. 

infamy (in'f d my) : extreme dis- 
grace. 

infinite (in'fi nite) : boundless. 

infused (infuged') : filled, in- 
spired. 

infusing : pouring in. 

inhospitably (in hos'pi td bly) : in a 
manner discourteous to, or care- 
less of, a guest. 

inscrutable (in scru'td ble) : not to 
be understood or explained. 

inspiriting (in spir'it ing) ; cheering. 

instill : to pour in gradually ; hence 
to introduce a thought gradually. 

instinctively (in stmc'tive ly) : by 
natural impulse. 

intricacies (In'tri cd §ie§) : compli- 
cated or confused ways. 

intrigue (in tr'igue' or m'trigwe) : a 
plot or conspiracy. 

irised (I'rised) : iridescent, show- 
ing the colors of the rainbow 
(from Iris, the rainbow goddess). 

irreparable (ir rep'd rd ble) : not 
capable of being repaired or 
remedied. 

irruption (Ir rup'tion) : a . break- 
ing in. 

Ischia (es'kya) : an island in the 
Mediterranean near Naples. 

jack boots : heavy boots reaching 

above the knee. 
Jacques (zhak) : a common French 

name. 
Janiculum (ja nic'u him) : a hill or 

ridge on the west bank of the 

Tiber, opposite Rome. 



604 



VOCABULARY 



jargoning: a confused sound of 
voices, as of birds twittering. 

jarvie (jar'vie) : the driver of a 
hackney coach. 

jasmine (jas'mme) : a shrub bear- 
ing fragrant flowers. 

jerkin : a close-fitting jacket. 

Jesuits (jeg'u it§) : a religious order 
prominent in the exploration 
and settlement of America. 

Joaquin (hwa ken') : a Mexican 
name. 

jocund (joc'wnd) : joyful, gay. 

jolly-boat : a small boat belonging 
to a ship and used for landing, 
etc. 

joyance : old English for " joyous- 
ness." 

Katahdin (kd ta/i'din) : a moun- 
tain in Maine. 

kelp : any of the various kinds of 
large brown seaweed. 

ken : to recognize, to see. 

Kill : Kill van Kull ; the channel 
between Staten Island and Ba- 
yonne (page 182). 

kirk: church. 

Kirkway : a raised road near Zoe- 
terwoude in Holland. 

kit: a small violin (page 611). 

Kroomen (kroo'men) : members of 
a Liberian tribe of negroes. 

Lajeunesse (la zhe ness') : a French 
name. 

L'AUegro (lal le'gr-5) : " the cheerful 
or merry one" ; a poem by Milton. 

Lammen (lam'men) : a fortress de- 
fending Leyden. 

larder: a pantry. 

Lars (lars) : an Etruscan title corre- 
sponding to the English " lord." 



laving (lav'ing) : washing, bath- 
ing. 

lea (lea) : a plain, a meadow. 

leads (leads) : in England, a flat 
roof (page 226). 

leadsman (leadg'man) : one who 
measures the depth of water by 
throwing out a lead plummet. 

leaguer (lea'giter) : a camp. 

Leicester (les'ter) : a county in 
England. 

Lerici (le'r'i ch'i) : a town in Italy. 

lethargy (leth'dr gy) : drowsiness, in- 
action. 

letters: type (page 180). 

levee (leVee or lev ee') : a river 
bank or landing place. 

lever (le'ver or lev'er) : a bar 
which is made to turn about a 
point or axis, as the bars of a 
capstan. 

Leyden (li'den) : a city in Hol- 
land. 

Leyderdorp (li'der dorp) : a village 
in Holland. 

lichen (li'ken) : dry moss growing 
on rocks and trees. 

limpid (lim'pid) : clear. 

Lincoln green : a cloth made in 
Lincoln, England, of the color of 
fresh green leaves, formerly 
much worn by huntsmen. 

Line: the equator (page 106). 

lineament (lin'e d ment) : an out- 
line of the face or figure. 

lists : the field for a tournament or 
combat. 

litter: a family of young animals 
brought forth at the same time. 

livery : a uniform worn by retain- 
ers or servants. 

livre (livr 1 ) : a French coin worth 
about nineteen cents. 



VOCABULARY 



605 



llama (la'md) : an animal resem- 
bling a small, hairy camel, with 
no hump, used in the Andes as a 
beast of burden. 

Lochiel (\6eh ieV) : a Highland 
chief. 

Lofoden (16 f o'den) : a group of 
islands off ths coast of Norway ; 
also called Lofoten. 

Lokeren (lok'er en) : a town in 
Belgium. 

Louvre (louvr') : a famous palace 
and art gallery in Paris. 

Lycidas (lyc'i das) : a poem by 
Milton. 

Lyra (ly'rd) : a constellation in the 
northern heavens; also called 
the Harp. 

Maelstrom (mael'strom) : a whirl- 
pool off the west coast of Nor- 
way. 

Magians (ma'gi dn§) : a priestly 
caste of the ancient Medes and 
Persians. 

maiden knight : an untried knight. 

main: the sea (page 572). 

Malouins (ma'lou &n') : inhabitants 
of St. Malo. 

mandate : command. 

maneuvering (md neu'verlng) : han- 
dling with skill or strategy. 

maniacal (md ni'd cdl) : mad, fran- 
tic. 

manifold (man'l fold) : many and 
different. 

manor (man'or) : an estate the 
proprietor of which has tenant 
farmers under his authority. 

Maria Louisa (md r'i'd lou I'gd) : an 
Austrian duchess. 

Marlborough : the Duke of Marl- 
borough, an English general who 



fought in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. 

Masaniello (ma §a nyel'lo) : a revo- 
lutionary leader of Naples in 
1647. 

masque (mask) : an old play in 
which the actors wore masks. 

mast : nuts, especially beechnuts 
and acorns, used as food for hogs 
or other animals. 

Mattawamkeag (mat td wam'keag) : 
a town on the Penobscot River. 

maw: stomach. 

Melita (mel'i td) : the ancient name 
for Malta. 

memorial : a statement of facts ad- 
dressed to a government or high 
officer. 

Mendes Pinto (men'desh pin'to) : 
a Portuguese traveler. 

mere : a lake or pool. 

merrymen : retainers, companions. 

metropolis (m£ trop'6 lis) : a chief 
city. 

Minas (mi'nds) : an arm of the 
Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. 

ministry (min'Is try) : the profes- 
sion of minister or clergyman. 

minstrelsy : song. 

minuet (min u et') : a kind of slow, 
' graceful dance. 

minute (mi nute') : very small. 

misanthropic (mis dn throp'ic) : hat- 
ing mankind. 

Mohicans (mo hi'cdng) : a tribe of 
Algonquin Indians living origi- 
nally along the Hudson River. 

Molina (mo li'na) : a companion 
of Pizarro. 

monody (mon'o" dy) : a mournful 
song having a single voice part. 

monotone (mon'6 tone) : a single 
unvaried tone. 



6o6 



VOCABULARY 



mooseberries : the fruit of the hob- 
blebush. 

moose wood : the striped maple. 

morris : an old game. 

Moskoe (mos'ke) : one of the Lo- 
foden islands. 

mull : to work a thing over men- 
tally. 

multitudinous : great in number. 

mutters: mutterings (page 50). 

mutual (mfi'tual) : relating to two 
persons. 

myriad (myr'i ad) : a great number. 

naked eye : unaided eye ; without 
the help of a telescope. 

Nar: a river in Umbria noted for 
its whitish, sulphurous water. 

nathless : nevertheless. 

necromancer (nec'ro man c§r) : a 
magician or sorcerer. 

Nekayah (n£ kaj/'aA) : a princess 
in " Rasselas." 

Nequinum (n£ kwi'nwm) : the an- 
cient name of Narni, in Umbria. 

nether (nefh'er) : under. 

nethermost (neth'er most) : lowest. 

new-farrowed : newly born. 

Nineveh (nin'& \eh) : an ancient 
city of Assyria. 

Nisroch (ms'roeh) : an Assyrian god. 

noble : an old English coin worth 
6s. 8d. 

North Aa (a) : a village in Holland. 

Northumberland : the northern- 
most county of England on the 
North Sea. 

obdurate (ob'dft rite) : hard, stern. 
oblivious (oh liv'i ous) : forgetful of. 
obnoxious : hateful, offensive. 
offices : services. 
Old Colony : the Plymouth colony. 



Old Probabilities: a name given 
to the government weather fore- 
caster. 

ominous (om'i nous) : foreshadow- 
ing ill. 

orbed (drb'ed) : having the form 
of an orb, round. 

orbit : the path of a planet or any 
heavenly body. 

orderly : an officer whose duty it is 
to carry the orders of a superior 
officer. 

osier (o'zher) : a pliable willow. 

osteria (6s ta r'i'a) : an inn (Italian). 

paean (pae'dn) : a song of joy. 

pageant (pag'eant) : a show or pro- 
cession. 

Palatinus (pal d ti'nws) : the Pala- 
tine, one of the seven hills of 
Rome. 

pale : a fenced field. 

palfrey (pal'frey) : a saddle horse ; 
often a small horse for ladies. 

pall (paH) : a line cloth spread 
over something, especially over 
a coffin. 

pall (paU) : to become tasteless or 
disgusting by too large a quan- 
tity ; to cloy. 

Palmas (pal'mas) : a cape of Li- 
beria. 

parole (pd role') : a pledge given by 
a prisoner in consideration of 
which he is allowed freedom; 
also a paper granting freedom 
on such conditions. 

parts : capabilities, talents (page 58) . 

pathos (pa'thSs) : tender sorrow 
aroused by suffering or distress. 

patois (pa twa' or pat'wa) : a dia- 
lect or form of speech peculiar 
to a certain class or locality. 



VOCABULARY 



607 



Paumanok (paw man'ok) : the In- 
dian name for Long Island. 

Pedro de Candia (pe'dro de can'- 
di a) : a companion of Pizarro. 

peer : an equal. 

Pekuah (pe" ku'a/i) : the princess's 
attendant in " Rasselas." 

pelf : wealth, frequently ill-gotten 
wealth. 

pellicle : a thin film or flake. 

peltries : pelts, fur skins. 

penny {plural, pence) : an English 
coin worth about two cents. 

pent : shut in. 

personalities : personal remarks, 
usually offensive. 

peruke (pe ruke') : a wig. 

phenomenon (phe nom'e non) : usu- 
ally a strange sight or event. 

pibroch (pi'broK): a kind of mar- 
tial music played on the bag- 
pipe. 

Picus (pi'cws): an ancient Italian 
chief. 

pierceable (per'sd ble) : that can be 
pierced. 

pilaster (pi las'ter) : half of a square 
pillar used upon the face of a 
building. 

pip : to peep like a chicken. 

pique (pi'k) : the point of a saddle 
(page 273). 

plain : old English for complain. 

Pleiades (ple'yd de§) : a group of 
stars in the constellation Taurus, 
six. visible without a telescope. 

point : one of the thirty-two points 
into which the circle of the com- 
pass is divided. 

Pointers : the two stars in the 
Great Bear, or Great Dipper, 
which are almost in a line with 
the North Star. 



polar ray : the light from the pole- 
star, or North Star. 

Pont Royal (pon' rwayal') : a bridge 
in Paris. 

port : the manner in which a person 
bears himself ; behavior. 

portcullis (portcul'iis) : a grating 
of iron or heavy timbers hung 
over the gateway of a castle and 
lowered to prevent passage. 

portend (por tend') : to foretell 
something sad or evil. 

portent: an omen, especially that 
which portends evil. 

postern (pos'tern) : a private en- 
trance. 

posthumous (pos't/iu mows) : after 
death. 

postilion (pos til'ydn) : the rider 
of one of the left-hand horses of 
a coach. 

pound : in English money 20 shil- 
lings, or in U. S. money about 
$4.86. 

Pozzuoli (pot swo'le) : an Italian 
town near Naples. 

precursor (pre cur'sor) : a forerun- 
ner, one who precedes. 

premonition (pre" mo ni'tion) : a 
forewarning. 

premonitory (pre" mon'i to ry) j warn- 
ing. 

presage (pre sage') : to foretell. 

pricking: urging a horse forward 
by pricking his sides with the 
spur. 

prior (pri'dr) : before. 

privily (priv'i ly) : secretly. 

proboscis (pro bos'cis) : a long tube- 
like extension of the mouth of in- 
sects through which they suck 
their food. 

prodigies: marvels. 



6o8 



VOCABULARY 



prolix (pro'lix or pro ltx') : long and 
tiresome. 

Prospero (pros'per 5) : the rightful 
Duke of Milan, in " The Tem- 
pest." 

provost (prov'ost or pro'vo) : a per- 
son having authority over cer- 
tain matters, a president. 

Punchinello (pun chi neVlo) : a 
humpbacked character in the 
Italian puppet shows ; Punch. 

purport (pur'port) : meaning. 



Quatre Bras (ka'tr' bra'; 
gian village. 



a Bel- 



rack : thin, flying, broken clouds ; 
a straining or wrenching, as by 
storms. 

Ramnian (ram'ni an) : a member 
of the Ramnes, one of the three 
original tribes of Rome. 

rampired (ram'pired) : fortified with 
ramparts. 

Ranee (raNs) : a river in France. 

Rasselas (ras'se las) : a story by 
Dr. Johnson. 

razed : old English for grazed. 

recessional (re c^esh'on dl) : a hymn 
sung as the choir or clergyman 
leaves the chancel, after service. 

reciprocate (re (jip'ro cate) : to give 
in return. 

redoubtable (re" doufrt'd ble) : for- 
midable. 

redress (re dress') : a making right, 
or reparation. 

refluent (ref'lu ent) : flowing back, 
ebbing. 

regime (ra zheem') : rule or man- 
agement. 

reiterate (re" it'gr ate) : to repeat 
again and again. 



rendezvous (raVde voo) : a meeting 
by appointment ; also a place of 
meeting. 

reposited : old English for " de- 
posited." 

respectively (re spec'tlve ly) : in the 
order named. 

retributory (re" trib' u to ry) : carry- 
ing retribution or punishment. 

revelry (reVel ry) : merrymaking. 

rife : abounding, full. 

roads : an anchorage. 

roan: a horse of a bay, chestnut, 
red or brown color mixed with 
gray or white. 

roe : a small and very swift deer. 

roister or roisterer : a rowdy. 

Ronsin (roN'saV) : a French name. 

rosbif (ros'bef) : French for " roast 
beef," a nickname applied to an 
Englishman. 

roses : rosettes. 

rowel (row'el) : the small spiked 
wheel on a spur. 

Rubicon (ru'bi con) : a river in Italy 
by crossing which Caesar made it 
impossible for him to turn back ; 
hence, a line separating two pos- 
sible courses of action. 

rubicund (ru'bi cund) : ruddy, red- 
dish. 

rubied (ru'bled) : ruby-colored. 

rue (rii) : French for " street." 

Rue de l'Echelle (rii'delashel') : a 
street in Paris. 

runic (ru'nic) : mystic. (From the 
runes or symbols used in secret 
writings by the ancient Teutonic 
peoples.) 

ruthlessly (ruth'less ly) : without pity. 

Sabrina (sd brl'nd) : a nymph of 
the river Severn. 



VOCABULARY 



609 



St. Helena (he le'nd) : an island in 

the Atlantic. 
St. Malo (sa,N ma'lo) : a French town 

on the English Channel, 
sallows : willows. 
sanguine (san'gwin) : blood-red. 
sarcophagus (sar coph'd gus) : a 

stone coffin. 
Sartor Resartus (sar'tor re sar'tus) : 

" the patcher patched," a book 

by Carlyle. 
satiety (sd ti'e ty) : fullness beyond 

desire, surfeit. 
savanna (sd van'nd) : a grassy plain. 
scar : a protruding rock, 
scrupulous : careful, conscientious, 
seductive (se duc'tlve) : tempting. 
Seius (se'i us) : the supposed lord 

of Ilva. 
seneschal (sen'e schdl) : the steward 

or overseer of a medieval lord. 
S annacherib (sen nae/i'er lb) : an 

Assyrian king. 
seraphic (se raph'ic) : like a seraph 

or angel, 
seven stars : either the Pleiades or 

the seven stars in the Great 

Dipper, 
shagreen (shd green') : a kind of 

untanned leather made in Russia 

and the East. 
shard : a fragment of some brittle 

substance, as a shell. 
Sharezer (sha re'zer) : a son of 

Sennacherib, 
shilling : an English coin equal to 

twelvepence, or about 24 cents, 
shire (shire) : a county, 
shrieve : to shrive, to receive con- 
fession as a priest, 
shrouds : ropes stretching from the 

masthead to the sides of a vessel 

as a support. 



siesta (si es'td) : a nap at midday, 
after luncheon. 

simultaneous (si mid tii/iie" ous) : at 
the same time. 

Sinai (sl'nal) : a mountain north 
of the Red Sea, where God ap- 
peared to the Israelites. 

sinister (sin'is ter) : unlucky, evil. 

sinuous (sin'u ous) : wavy, wind- 
ing. 

siren (si'ren) : one of the sea 
nymphs who were said to fre- 
quent an island near Italy and 
lure mariners upon the rocks by 
their singing. 

sirrah (sir' rdh) : a form of address 
used to inferiors, and showing 
anger or contempt. 

sith : old English for " since." 

sizar (si'zar) : a student, in some 
of the English universities, who is 
educated free of charge, or who 
pays his expenses by working. 

slabs : the outside pieces of a log, 
usually with the bark upon them, 
sawed off when cutting it up into 
boards. 

slack : slack water, the time of the 
tide when the water is still, be- 
tween ebb and flow. 

sloop : a single-masted vessel, 
rigged fore-and-aft. 

solaced (sol'ast) : cheered or com- 
forted. 

soldi (sol'di) : plural of " soldo," a 
small Italian coin worth about 
one cent. 

Solidor (so'l'i d6r') : a French fort- 
ress. 

soliloquy (so lil'o quy) : a talking 
to one's self. 

solstice (sol'stice) : the time at 
which the sun is farthest from 



6io 



VOCABULARY 



the equator — June 21 and De- 
cember 21. 

spank : to move briskly (page 306). 

spasmodic (spa§ mod'ic) : fitful, in 
spasms. 

Spezia (spet'sya) : a town in Italy. 

spherule (spher'ule) : a little sphere. 

Spurius Lartius (spu'ri ws lar'shi us) : 
one of the companions of Hora- 
tius. 

squalid (squal'Id) : dirty. 

stall: a seat in the choir of a 
church (page 225). 

status (sta'tws) : legal standing of 
a person or thing. 

stead (stead) : service, advantage. 

stole : a long loose robe. 

strada (stra'da) : a street (Italian). 

strand: shore. 

strappado (strap pa/do) : an an- 
cient instrument of punishment. 

straths (straths) : wide river val- 
leys. 

subaltern (sub al'tern) : any officer 
below the rank of captain. 

subtle (subt'le) : delicate. 

succory (siic'co ry) : chicory, a 
plant bearing heads of bright 
blue flowers. 

sugar-loaf: shaped like the old- 
fashioned sugar loaf — conical 
with rounded top. 

suite (swet) : a body of attendants 
(page 240). 

supernal (su per'ndl) : having a 
very high place or nature. 

surtout (sur toot' or sur too ) : a long, 
close-fitting overcoat. 

swain : a young countryman. 

swinglebar: a singletree, the piv- 
oted or swinging bar to which 
the traces of a harness are fixed. 

swound : old English for " swoon." 



Sycorax (syc'o" rax) : a witch, in 

" The Tempest." 
sylvan (syl'vdn) : pertaining to the 

woods. 

Tabard (tab'drd) : the name of an 
old inn near London. 

taciturn (tayiturn) : silent, reticent, 
reserved. 

tallow-chandler: one who makes 
or sells tallow candles. 

tarantella (ta'ran tel'id) : a Nea- 
politan dance. 

tattoo : a military call sounded on 
drum, bugle, or trumpet, giving 
notice to soldiers to go to their 
quarters. 

termagant (ter'md gant) : quarrel- 
some, scolding. 

theological (the 6 log'i cdl) : per- 
taining to the science of God 
and religion. 

theories (the'S rieg) : individual 
views that explain observed 
facts. 

Thoreau (tho'ro) : an American 
naturalist. 

thrall: slavery (page 224). 

thrid : to thread, to pierce through. 

" thunder and lightning " : a cloth 
of dark gray with white flecks. 

Tifernum (tifer'num) : an ancient 
Italian city on or near the site of 
the modern Citta di Castello. 

tight: strong and well-formed 
(page 175). 

tintinnabulation (tin tin n&b u la'- 
tion) : a tinkling or jingling, as 
of bells. 

Titan (tl'tdn) : in Greek mythol- 
ogy, one of the gigantic gods 
who preceded Zeus and the 
Olympians. 



VOCABULARY 



611 



Titanic (ti tan'ic) : like the Titans ; 
gigantic. 

Titian (ti'shi an) : a member of 
the Tities, one of the three orig- 
inal tribes of Rome. 

tocsin : an alarm bell. 

Tongres (tONgr') : a town in Bel- 
gium. 

torsion (tdr'sion) : a twisting. 

Toulon (tou Ion') : a city in France. 

Tourville (tour'ville) : admiral of 
the French fleet in 1692. 

Trafalgar (traf 'a\ gar') : a Spanish 
cape. 

trammel: an iron hook used for 
hanging kettles over a fire. 

translucent (tr&ns lii'cent) : partly- 
transparent. 

trattoria (trat'to r'i'a) : an eating 
house (Italian). 

treacle (trea'cle) : molasses. 

tricolor (trl'c61'5r) : the French 
flag, of blue, white, and red, 
adopted at the time of the 
French Revolution. 

Triton (tri'tdn) : a demigod, son 
of Neptune. His horn was a 
conch shell, and the blowing of 
it was said to make the roaring 
of the sea. 

truculent (truc'u lent) : fierce, sav- 
age. 

trysting (tryst'ing) day: an ar- 
ranged day of meeting. 

Tuileries (twel're) : a royal palace 
in Paris. 

Tumbez (tum'beth, or tum'bez) : a 
town on the coast of Peru. 

turkis (tur'kls) : an old word for 
" turquoise," a greenish blue. 

udder: the milk bag of cows or 
other animals. 



umbrageous (iim bra'geows) : shady. 

unbeholden : unseen. 

unbodied (im bod'ied) : freed from 
the body. 

unmeet (tin meet') : unfit. 

unpremeditated (un pre" med'i tat- 
ed) : not thought of beforehand. 

unscathed (un scathed') : safe, un- 
harmed. 

untimely : before its time. 

unwittingly : unintentionally, with- 
out knowing why. 

Uttoxeter (ut tox'e ter or ux'tSr) : 
a town in England. 

vagaries (va ga'rie§) : freaks, whims. 

Valdez (val'deth) : a Spanish gen- 
eral. 

valet (v&l'et or val'ft) : a man- 
servant who has charge of one's 
clothes. 

van : the front of an army. 

vaunt: boast. 

vernal : pertaining to spring. 

vesper: evening. 

vicar (vic'ar) : a clergyman of the 
Episcopal or Catholic Church 
having charge of a church or 
mission as the bishop's deputy. 

vindicated (vin'di cat Sd) : justified, 
made good. 

virgin (vlr'gin) : young, unmarried. 

vociferous (v6 clf'er ous) : noisy. 

Volscian (vSl'shi an) : a Latin tribe. 

voluble (vol'uble): fluent, talka- 
tive. 

voluminously (vo lii'mi nous If) : co- 
piously, in great volume. 

voluptuous (v6 liip'tft ous) : full of 
pleasure to the senses. 

vortices (vdr'ti ce§) : plural of " vor- 
tex," the center of a whirlpool 
or eddy. 



6l2 



VOCABULARY 



Vurrgh (vur) : Yaero, one of the 
Lofoden islands. 



wain : a wagon. 

wake-robin : the trillium, a spring 
flower. 

wallet (wal'let) : here, a knapsack 
for carrying provisions on a 
journey. 

Warwick (war'iwTck) : a noted Eng- 
lish family. 

whist : hushed, silent. 

whittle : a knife. 

wight (wight) : a person, a crea- 
ture. 



wist : first person singular, preterit 

of wit, I knew, 
wold (wold) : a plain. 
woof : the cross threads of a woven 

fabric. 

yellow-breeched : clothed with yel- 
low breeches. 

yeoman : an English farmer or free- 
holder. 

yuca (yu'ca) : the cassava plant or 
fruit (page 364). 

Zoeterwoude (zu'ter wou de) : a 

village and fortress in Holland. 
zone : a girdle. 



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